After it’s all over

Published on by Laura Bloomsbury 
There are sedentary signs
just before. A magnified expectancy
when quietude hangs, still as lint
on cobwebs in the corner
of the shed. Only an intermittent
rustle attends our listening
prodromal puffs of wind
like the awakening butterfly
mistaking glass for air

The anarchist trees begin it.
A collective fling of leaf, twig
then missile branches aimed,
it seems, with some deliberation. 
Runaway detritus follows after
barrelling down empty streets
slapping, smacking blindly
into posts, poles, panes.
And there at the stop sign
in the now riparian road
a river roars past, raging
against all confinement.

After its all over
we’ll breathe relief.
Begin afresh, clearing,
mending fences
picking through broken pieces
- but there should be no analogy here
no storm's ever contained in a teacup
no dust ever really settles.
Shards of words hurled
cut and scratch
insults, injury, blame
bullet hole the walls
old scores like scars
visibly heal over.

One for Open Link Night where anything goes though Grace is host and featuring poems of Louise Gluck who has recently died aged 80. “The advantage of poetry over life is that poetry, if it is sharp enough, may last,” [source]

23 thoughts on “After it’s all over”

  1. I love the way this poem begins gentle and wistful, Laura, with ‘a magnified expectancy / when quietude hangs, still as lint / on cobwebs in the corner / of the shed’, and then launches into autumn. It builds up beautifully and raucously, with the ‘runaway detritus … barrelling down empty streets’ and you’ capture the current British weather in the river that ‘roars past, raging
    against all confinement’. The final stanza is yet to come in reality – I hope it comes soon.

  3. “no dust ever really settles”–the layers of damage, the scars, never go away, from either nature’s fury or our own. (K)

  4. Powerfully written. I shudder some.

    /like the awakening butterfly / mistaking glass for air

    /a river roars past, raging / against all confinement.

    The world, so immense, and that only the smallest beginning of all things far and deep. I wonder too, What kitchen drawer handle, what door frame, what floor takes offense at all the things we are adamant about?

    There is not much fight left in me. I might say almost anything.

  6. I was thinking about projectile branches just this morning. One winter storm my friend got a branch through his windshield and the next day I got one through my car’s rear window. It felt like the trees were out to get us. The distance and amount of force that had made that branch fly through the glass of my rear window at that angle is truly frightening to think about (I’m thinking of fitting it into my horror novel I’m planning to write next month).

    Shards of words hurled that distance with that force are also frightening to think about.

  7. What a vivid description of the storm arrival and the aftermath. So much power in these lines:
    no storm’s ever contained in a teacup
    no dust ever really settles

  8. Your poem is like a tempest in itself, Laura, self-contained as a teacup until it is read and then stirs other hearts to recognize what seems clearer every day: nature’s storms may come and go, but humanity’s self-created turmoil seem to only increase in intensity, waiting out each lull in violence only to erupt once again in increased fury. Beautifully stirring writing for such a dismal topic.

    1. thank you so much for all your input here Dora – the topic was not intended to be dismal but a passing reference to stormy relationships – it stopped there rather than took in the world of violence!

  9. The sort of storm the heart and mind will think on for a lifetime. Your description is so rich. I love how you make us wait for it…that turn of thought.

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