rumble tumble

‘The Wind’

Why does the wind so want to be
Here in my little room with me?
He’s all the world to blow about,
But just because I keep him out
He cannot be a moment still,
But frets upon my window sill,
And sometimes brings a noisy rain
To help him batter at the pane.

Upon my door he comes to knock.
He rattles, rattles at the lock
And lifts the latch and stirs the key-
Then waits a moment breathlessly,
And soon, more fiercely than before.
He shakes my little trembling door,
And though “Come in, come in!” I say,
He neither comes nor goes away.

Barefoot across the chilly floor
I run and open wide the door;
He rushes in and back again
He goes to batter door and pane,
Pleased to have blown my candle out.
He’s all the world to blow about,
Why does he want so much to be
Here in my little room with me?

My mental pictures of wild Connacht weather would furnish a municipal gallery, each of them hugely framed in gilt and called something like ‘Tempest in Mayo’. The story the other night would have suited Turner to a T: in the fierce headlights of a friend’s minibus, it swarmed about us in flourishes of silver, in washes of ochre and umber. Only a minibus, driven with knowledge of every twist and turn of the road in all conceivable conditions (in other words, the school bus) could have brought us home at all. The road seethed with water. It poured from every gap in the ditch, spilled from every hill stream, hummocked out of boreens. Below our own gable, The Hollow echoed to the crash and grind of boulders, the hollow thock! so like the collisions of rams. A quick swing of the flashlamp in the run from the gate to the front door lit a dizzying rush of water just inches below the new footbridge.