The Wind at Alesjaure

High on the plane I was torn apart 
by a storm of white atoms. 
I lowered my head, retreated to pumice.   
I didn’t know what was up or down, 
tripping and falling, I couldn’t breathe.  
My face was a mask of ice. 
The earth wants me dead,  
that’s all, no recrimination — 
when ions slow to nothing, 
emotion is a waste of time. 
Something strange happened then — 
resistance vanished  
and the current in my brain 
flowed without source,  
battling a wave that was standing still, 
time dropped out of the equation.  
Things went on like that until there was a quench
of the storm and I dropped down to a lower valley 
where the violence was gone.  
I sailed like that in the craft of my body; 
ragged and torn like a lump of corral,  
when I made it to the refuge, 
the guardian asked about the weather on top. 
A little blowy, I said, knowing 
they don’t like exaggeration.    
I couldn’t say I’d been torn apart or worse —
that I’d found a primeval force 
never to be seen or felt again unless I go back 
to that place where the sun turns the ice to glass.   
Who knows why the earth wants us dead 
but I think I was happy in the fallout 
where weak bonds are destroyed.    
If I want to live I have to go back to that place 
where I was torn apart by a storm of white atoms. 

Laurence O’Dwyer | The Lake at Hetta
Contents | Mudlark No. 79 (2024)