Storm Warning

The storm has no temper.
It has no patience.
It has no warning.

Blue sky—
and then the atmosphere breaks.

Warmth turns to frost
in the time it takes
for a cloud to cross the sun.

The wind changes direction so violently
the trees have no time to bend.
Branches snap
before the leaves know they're moving.

Sunlight.
Hail.
Sunlight again.

No transition.
No explanation.
Only the impossible violence
of one season replacing another.

There are two skies above this weather:
one bright enough to promise spring,
the other black with the certainty of an ending.

Sometimes they occupy the same horizon.

Lightning strikes beneath a cloudless sky.
Rain falls upward.
The air burns cold.
The ground trembles
without a single sound of thunder.

And then, abruptly,
the storm becomes beautiful.

A warm front rolls in.
The clouds open.
Everything glows gold.

The air is gentle.
The wind is soft.
The atmosphere almost apologises
for what it did moments before.

But the pressure is already changing.

A sudden freeze.
A violent gust.
A sky torn open from the inside.

The storm cannot decide
whether to shelter the coastline
or swallow it whole.

It pulls the tide toward the moon
and throws it back against the shore.
It begs the ocean to stay
and batters it for coming too close.

The sea retreats.
The sea returns.
The sea retreats again.

All within the same hour.

From a distance,
the landscape appears untouched.

No thunder announces the devastation.
No siren marks the sudden collapse.
The windows remain intact.
The houses remain standing.

Only the barometer knows.

Only the pressure in the walls,
the trembling branches,
the birds abandoning their nests
before the sky has even changed colour.

And when the storm passes,
there is no clear account
of what happened.

Just a coastline rearranged,
a sudden winter in the middle of June,
and sunlight falling
on ground still trembling.

The forecast calls it scattered weather.

The atmosphere calls it nothing.

But somewhere beneath the quiet sky,
the pressure is dropping again.