Storm Self

I chose slip-on cloth shoes
with thin plastic soles 
on the basis that they’d dry quickly.
I didn’t bother with socks.
Then I stood in the garage and heard the sky 
hurling water down on us, fierce and exact
I saw spray cast horizontally, 
dashed against car windows
like we were sailing and the plunging bow
had frothed to anger a ploughed up sea.

In the disused cat yard
the silkies had turned to statues
their pom pom heads motionless
Maybe they really did think
the sky was falling, crouching there
awaiting the steely, suffocating blanket
the nothing and the everything.

I ran to help them, the rain hammering
on my hood,  the torrents of homeless water
swirling around my feet.
But they were more scared of me
than the deluginous sky.

By the time the rain had abated
and the garage roof had stopped roaring
(louder than the thunder)
I’d got busy clearing drainage pathways
my jeans soaked from my gortex down
The cockies shrieked, echoing the sound
of my shovel scraping the pavers.
I pictured them, crests like yellow hands
spanned and indignant
but I didn’t look up to find them.

I was thinking… remembering
that day hail carpeted the pavers 
and the lawn, dirty white peas nestling in
thicker and thicker
and two hooded figures racing about with tools
and shapeless shouts, precarious yet sure
and me from the kitchen,  reaching a ginger hand outside
to scoop up a cupful of wonder for the kids,
hiding my fear, my instinct to stay away from windows
to take off my jewellery, the sense that every
bolt of lightning would short circuit me,
blaze me up in a terror of sparks.

I was remembering and reflecting
on that me and this me
(the one out here in the storm
offering to save chickens
and dam up the streaming)
and I was wondering 
wherein lay the difference.