The March Storm

This is a poem about the storm that hit on the 10th March 2008.

I was on holiday in Devon and wrote this poem about the storm and how climate change is forcing us to realise that Nature is hitting back .

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7285859.stm



The March Storm.


It was a fearsome gale that drew us out of our room,
Swept us out of our warm bed and into the gloom,
Of a moonless March night as we carefully stepped,
Along that dark cliff path and onto Croyde beach,
Down a wave wracked path by a hissing peddle ridge,
Then a slip deadly descent on weed clagged steps,
To that long spit where the tide sweeps the land,
Set between Baggy Point cliffs and Saunton sands,
We lurched forward slowly before the pummelling foe,
Seeking shelter from the winds ever rising flow,
As storm front and high tide, now moon entwined,
Conjured a mizzling mist that masked the rocks,
Where unseen peaks had snagged drifting nets,
Of passing fishing boats in snarls of debt and disgrace,
Sending forth a sea spray that salted our lips.


We watched the dark waters rise and then usurp,
The works of men that in moments became absurd,
The hubris of harbour walls that cracked and fell,
Before the oceans sudden shuddering swell,
The sea defences breach and moorings snap,
The waves in triumph overcome the banks,
Boats rolled on their backs, then lay dead in the water,
As if the victims of some arcane slaughter,
Then street lamps on the shoreline like golden braid,
Began to flicker and flash and then finally fade,
Then the night rushed in to fill the sudden void,
And darken the windows of every house in Croyde.


Sandbags lay drowned upon the tide steeped steps,
of houses where only candles gave light and heat,
As families huddled afraid in their upstairs rooms,
Awaiting the savage verdict of natures slow doom,
Frightened horses in the fields slipped their halters,
Galloped through the surf and then back to safety,
Whilst from the dunes a dervish of drifting sand,
Scoured our eyes as it writhed along the shore,
A dark omen from the dunes set free upon the earth ,
An portent of the dangers that we all now endure.


Amid the constant crash and roar of the wrecker waters,
We watched the cruel work of Rans nine daughters,
Who gathered like ravens on the rocks to feast,
Upon drowned mariners, the lost souls of broken fleets,
As that wild witch of the waves in a drunken rage,
Gorged on the tawny tide of her husband Aegirs mead,
Her bloated belly filled with broken bones,
The wind screamed and her victims moaned,
As through a scrying glass we saw the future reflected,
And a mighty tidal wave gather in the far distance,
Preparing to sweep away all our petty delusions,
And drown all our crimes with its final judgement.

As Tyr sought to fetter Fenris the wolf, we too have failed,
To bind the jaws of nature in our chains of science,
To exert control over the wild and over ourselves,
So it will return as it must return, but worse than before,
To wreak its vengeance, and demand the cost Man abhors,
And unleash that crimson beast of mocking Nemesis,
Revenge for every wrong against Nature we have inflicted,
To wreck the dreams of men and drown their goals,
And scatter the broken bones of fragile delusion,
Upon the bloody rocks of inevitable consequence.

For none may seek to turn that tide with wishes,
It seeks a prize of its own that we call vicious,
And seeks profit from our misery and riches in our loss,
To crucify us all as criminals upon our golden cross,
For that is the toll imposed upon us for our sins,
The tipping point where the rocks of reality impinge,
For we reap the harvest that we have sown ourselves,
And build with delusions the walls of our own prison cells,
So as to create for ourselves that certain hell,
Where only pale spirits forever in misery will dwell.