(A)Where Storms Come From

and

(B) Why

She flings her hands thrice—thus—east to west,

mutters incantation to the startled moon,

stamps out a pentagram upon the wet sand,

and across the oscillant ocean and its moon-bright path

casually unleashes the hurricane.

For three days monstrous winds and waves

rage, like explosions hurled out by antique Thera

that piled the muraled mausoleum of Knossos under tons of ash,

erased Minoan Crete in tidal wave and earthquake

and bequeathed to myth the horrors of a universal flood.

And when, at last, days resume,

glare orange for noon,

and die like red lava shot through with black,

new tidal flats have reclaimed miles to seaward

and new inlets gouge into the beaten land.

(Did she stand there on that impossible shore

while land and sea mixed, whirlpooled together

in those embattled winds and erupted batterment of waves?)

After, even the sand looks different.

But there it is, after,

while the red sun glares across an uneasy slate of sea,

she searches

casually,

scuffling the foam about her feet,

straying the altered shoreline.

Pausing, she bends

and picks up a smooth white heaviness,

glances accidentally into the frowning sun,

and smiles a private smile.

Pearl-like, hand-cupping size,

almost it is translucent.

And it holds, in purer white,

the same face

the sun sees.