INTERFERENCE

I fled indoors from a snarling March gale
and slammed shut the windows: the double-glazing
silenced the robin’s bright arpeggios,
but could not quell the riot of bugling squalls
that clattered slates, skidded squealing round corners,
and revving up their supercharged engines
roared down reverberating chimneys.

I lay in the bath while warm water rose
and flooded my ears, seeming to throttle back
the storm’s hullabaloo, outblasted now
by amplified squelch and staccato in my gut,
a fusillade of shots from a dripping tap,
the juddering boom of shockwaves as fo-fum feet
tiptoed upstairs and crept across creaking floor.

The ebbing tide gurgled and hissed from the bath
which hummed like a kettle-drum as I scoured it clean.
I rustle into bed, my snoring husband
warming me on one side, the opposite ear
muffed by a sleepy cat: the crisp ker-put
of her heart trumps the laboured harrumph of mine
and the white noise of her purr cancels at last
the battle-shriek and hammer of the wind.

Return to Index

Return to Home