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'Hailstone Villanelle'

by
October 2019, no. 415

'Hailstone Villanelle'

by
October 2019, no. 415

Hailstones in misshapen formation pound on roof corrugations,
distorted in scrying before reaching their target,
feathers and leaves stripped, birds and trees in transition.

To taste the fracture when air pressure is shaken and unshaken,
and lightning brings its personalised thunder close to a house in retreat,
hailstones misshapen in formation pound on the roof’s corrugations.

What can you portend when there are no signs of exposition,
when as sudden as sky the ground is remade as ice in white heat?
Feathers and leaves stripped, birds and trees in remission.

Which feather belongs to which absent bird, how did it pattern
a flight path laid bare to updraft the wet into frozen conflict?
Hailstones in misshapen formation pound on the roof’s corrugations.

Jagged as quartz exposed in red earth after the deluge’s erosion,
violent as an orbuculum’s sheen of hope broken by its clairvoyant,
feathers and leaves stripped as birds and trees are lost in transition.

Milky-centred fist-sized stones resist melting after devastation –
each leaf green as when torn away, strips of bark clean as skin, feathers rent;
hailstones in misshapen formation pound on the roof’s corrugations,
feathers and leaves, stripped birds and trees in remission.

From the New Issue

Comment (1)

  • Exceptional. Very Nice.
    Posted by Oliver Allen
    14 October 2019

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