Storm Damage (Poetry)

After the great storm of October 1987

The winds died in the night, then dawn broke cool and calm
and in that pale-spun light, wreckage-strewn and sad
October gardens revealed the full extent of harm
scenes of utter devastation — the damage riot-bad.

So many fences down, familiar trees knocked flat
uprooted in the frenzy — smashed and cruelly torn
limb from limb. Then it seemed barely credible that
anything had survived intact after such a storm.

A watery and sorry sun threw faint warmth around
as operations to clear up the awful mess began
tiles and debris scattered wide across ruined ground
a heavy-hearted silence hung — subdued the land.

Neighbours worked together — all did the best they could
freeing paths of branches, replanting toppled hedges
disposing of broken glass, piling splintered wood —
some kind of order out of chaos, hiding the raw edges.

Except for one man broken — too sick to leave his bed
felled by something fiercer than a passing hurricane.
His greenhouse others rescued, and they rebuilt his shed
to help to ease the worries of a dying man.

Nature had repaired the gardens by the start of Spring.
He’d died at Christmas and his aging widow moved away.
The seasons pass and leave little trace of anything
after nigh on thirty years, who thinks of him today?

But when the autumn winds again whip up surviving trees
to agonies and the air turns sharp with threat
it all comes back — that string of interwoven memories —
what Fate destroys so savagely, Man strives to resurrect.