Stormchild Listening

Clouds scud low across the sky
thick enough to completely obscure
the dirty-penny eye of the dying moon
June is gone and the world is burning
the stink of ozone and fried mesquite
hangs in the air; blown debris of
dead trees and scrub seems to want
the solace and moisture in my eyes,
as they watch the weather trap this valley
below it's sinister, portentous weight.

They do not call the wind Moriah or Santa Ana
Tonight, these folks huddle in pre-fab hovels
and call it scourge, for tonight it is so;
alive and angry, knowing nor caring for
respect for the traveler, for the seeker
there is only warning in the wind.
I call this wind the lovers of ancient silences,
a power tryst that bleeds passion and lust for return
to the raw land and the howl of the true native;
she shrieks through the town
he ravages the lawns and gnaws
the effigies of man, they cry together
"Seek shelter from me, my domain
is all tonight, ignore us at your peril!"

Lightning flashes - brighter than day
but, so far away that the illusion
of distance and streetlight safety
is almost complete. Oily bolts seem to
breathe up from the ground, lick the clouds
taste the water there, and spit disaster
into smouldering, burning,
exploding, disintegrating, vaporizing life;
it dances and laughs as if waving
a wand of smoking wiels or a lash of wrath
to blast the land and sear the air, power
to pry molecules from their mates
and send the reek of grief
to the humans who gawk in awe at the forces
that dance beyond their reach.

The thunder in this land does speak,
loudly, if rarely, it calls to the dead
and wandering spirits who lithely shy away
from the halide and mercurial light;
ancestors of no one now, who flee to, but
mostly fro, in eternal confusion at the sense
of false green, primped and manicured nature,
that, molested, hides something that resembles
nothing of the shape or scent of lands
these souls of badger and crow, eagle and wolf
used to know. The voice cries in short bursts
of bestial frustration, not having words for
betreayal or desecration; it cannot ask the
land or the usurping nation "Where are my children?";
so it wanders away, and does not bother to mutter.

I am a child of storms, raised from the land
of many waters, fed by the creatures who
knew weather and hardship in winter's grip;
flora that hid from rain and reached for sun,
shook in thunder's wrath, and let go the earth
to find a home beyond some impromptu river's run-
I wonder, on nights like this, if I am alone
as I watch nature flailing at the ground,
scratching the belly of the earth as she heaves
in complaint, wretched and painted like some
beautiful, drug-addled whore, shaved and tarred
by machines and driven insane in the throes
of pains that her pimps mistake for stupid passion;
I hear, alone, I fear, this storm moan to me,
its demands groaned through engineered grass
and foreign trees; fed by strange chemicals,
the language is foul and choked
with naked need to be free of this evil disease -
and to me, who can hear, barely, sometimes,
it pleads "Oh please, stormchild, give me peace -
leave!"