First Winter Storm

The clouds plume and hulk over our field. Wet grasses,
combed smooth, arch, carrying the weight of the wind
from the forest that rushes the leaves in a great Pacific breath.
Electricity cut, I shutter the windows and step onto the porch,
lantern unlit. I feel in my bones and blood what’s coming.
Beyond the cracking trees, beyond the mountains hazy
in the gray dusk, the sands are unsettled, pounded and roiled
by foaming silt, cold as the sharks that follow winter south.

John Struloeff
First Winter Storm first appeared in Center, 2003.