Then Wail, oh Gale

Sometimes when the poem-well feels a little parched I flip open a book to see if anything stirs.

The first poem I came upon was a perfect springboard on this rain-wind-tossed morn...

Ode to the West Wind by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Then wail, oh gale

that flings the rain

that flails the shuttered window-pane

that frames the seasons of the earth

that cradles fronds of death and birth

that from the swaddled seed will wing

the nuances of morrow’s spring

that feeds the hope that else would fail

within the lope of autumn’s gale

Then flicker, flame

that warms the chill

that charms fall's fame from stricken hill

that wore a gown of orange and red

before rogue-gales winnowed the thread

that cannot keep its virile vim

but falls asleep beneath the limb

that once upon a summer day

would tune the noon with crooning lay

Then weep, yon cloud

that shrouds the chaise

that hoards the leaf of ancients days

that cups within its muddy keep

the ruddy tatters, fast asleep

that beds the nucleus of flow’rs

that weds with red and gold-belled hours

the tides that tune the blinding gale

that soon the boon of bloom will pale

© Janet Martin