It was a wet when. At the villa’s postern,
along the margin of the sea, wet dight I stood
to study the waters’ madness,
the storm’s coarse revelry. The waves whelped foam
begotten by gales from shore. Rain, retched from clouds,
beat small ripples into breaker-boils,
then cast the taut liquid at the land.
Hurricane, hellsprite! Nature’s dynamo!
Far off, amidst the rutting waves, a gob of boat,
barely afloat in that sink of mad typhoon,
that ghastly froth of sea’s fore-placid breast
breached by maddened breezes.
Sucked down that ship it was,
dragged beneath the cistern reeky
of the waves’ debauch. Of its sailors shrieking,
the storm made orts for sharks’ rank gourmandize.
Then, content, the winds rolled off the wanton waves,
threw back thick quilts of clouds and sighed at length.
Sweet now the voice of Aeolus as he confessed
his sins to the ever shriving sun.
And I, at the postern still, stood staring
at the once-where of that ship.
Sucked down it was, and now no more
crossing the waters’ buoyant breast.
* * *
(c) Gregory V Driscoll 2011
