The Current Norm in Rainstorms

Hurricane force winds battered the UK this past week causing untold damage. Not to mention the increase in numbers and the destruction of tornadoes here in the US. Storms worldwide have definitely become stronger, and I remember enduring more than one such rainstorm last summer.

The Current Norm in Rainstorms

A slash of sizzling light from the hand

of a bellicose warrior rampaging

across a raven sky rent the moonless

gloom. Lightsabers stormed.

Wrath overtook the street, gushed

over curbs, rushed like brigand bots

spewing mayhem in a parched city

as mortals huddled behind bolted doors.

The dragoon, riding the wind, moved on,

rallying the weeds but leaving withered

grasses slammed by the downpour

and the air clammy as a damp kerchief

tossed as he withdrew.

Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

If Shakespeare Were a Sailor

Here is another in my series of poems about historical figures if they had been forced to choose different professions.

If Shakespeare Were a Sailor

                      after Charles Tomlinson

If Shakespeare were a sailor

he would have salted sonnets

on the sails and rollicked beneath

the billows above him, seared poetry

into the masts, and laid-by threads

of gossip from ale-swilling sea dogs

in the ports of Inverness and Aberdeen,

around bereft temples and animated

fountains of the Western Sea and more,

all while aching to luff these tidbits

into dramas once favorable winds

blew him back to London City

and into the arms of his beloved,

the theatre.

Marilyn Aschoff Mellor