Poem for Thursday

The Storm
By Theodore Roethke

1

Against the stone breakwater,
Only an ominous lapping,
While the wind whines overhead,
Coming down from the mountain,
Whistling between the arbors, the winding terraces;
A thin whine of wires, a rattling and flapping of leaves,
And the small street-lamp swinging and slamming against
        the lamp pole.

Where have the people gone?
There is one light on the mountain.

2

Along the sea-wall, a steady sloshing of the swell,
The waves not yet high, but even,
Coming closer and closer upon each other;
A fine fume of rain driving in from the sea,
Riddling the sand, like a wide spray of buckshot,
The wind from the sea and the wind from the mountain contending,
Flicking the foam from the whitecaps straight upward into the darkness.

A time to go home!--
And a child's dirty shift billows upward out of an alley,
A cat runs from the wind as we do,
Between the whitening trees, up Santa Lucia,
Where the heavy door unlocks,
And our breath comes more easy,--
Then a crack of thunder, and the black rain runs over us, over
The flat-roofed houses, coming down in gusts, beating
The walls, the slatted windows, driving
The last watcher indoors, moving the cardplayers closer
To their cards, their anisette.

3

We creep to our bed, and its straw mattress.
We wait; we listen.
The storm lulls off, then redoubles,
Bending the trees half-way down to the ground,
Shaking loose the last wizened oranges in the orchard,
Flattening the limber carnations.

A spider eases himself down from a swaying light-bulb,
Running over the coverlet, down under the iron bedstead.
The bulb goes on and off, weakly.
Water roars into the cistern.

We lie closer on the gritty pillow,
Breathing heavily, hoping--
For the great last leap of the wave over the breakwater,
The flat boom on the beach of the towering sea-swell,
The sudden shudder as the jutting sea-cliff collapses,
And the hurricane drives the dead straw into the living pine-tree.

--------


Posting while I can; if the weather forecasters are right, I may not be able to get online for quite awhile beyond this afternoon. Here is my review of Enterprise's "Anomaly" for TrekToday; it's quite political, as was the episode.

Last night I had a dream about a college professor whom I adored. She was in my house, looking over my library, and she wanted to borrow a bunch of my books for a paper she was writing because she couldn't find the books anywhere else. I was pretty sure as I handed her the books that I would never see them again, since I only talk to her a couple of times a year and haven't seen her in person since...wow, 1999 maybe? But I was still thrilled to be giving her the books because I hoped that she would think of me when she saw them on her shelves. I wonder what it means.

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Gacked from , and speaking of Potions...


You are...Rebel Snape! Found most commonly in
Marauder-era fics, you also crop up
occasionally in canon-era stories, usually when
you're shocking the hell out of Harry with your
utter coolness. With your leather clothing,
tight body, laid-back personality, and skill on
the Quidditch pitch, it's no wonder that
everyone from Lucius Malfoy to Voldemort
himself wants to shag you. However, when you
flip your ponytail and take off on your antique
motorcycle, readers might wonder just what
happened to Sirius Black...
What Wildly Out-of-Character Fanfic Snape Are You?
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