The storm

Jack Sorenson

Cold weather evocative as scent of the shipment
The romance of dark storm clouds sounded
In big skies over the low wide river loudly
Of long shadows and longer shafts of light
That instead scared the crew hiding below

Of smoke now smelled the ship
Fabulous film-noir stills of Central Station
Of freezing fog silvering the chilled, stilled parks
of the glamorous past stood toghter

Here drops on a reanimate are sequins
in the lamplight, in the black-and-white
Seemly like a shipmates’ worse nightmare

Your young, still-lovely mother laughs, the
Hem of her sundress whipped up
Knowing from her cozy fire back at home see her son’s life 
Demissished before her eyes
Then tears fell
by a wind on a beach before you were born

all the Dads in hats –tit them in his demised at the public Pub
are making for Central at five past five looked by the shipmates’ pocket watch
in the snow, in the rain, in the sudden what-a-scorcher,
in the smog, there is a sound only hear by the shops cabin of the Chapin-sung
Belted dark overcoats white-spattered by the starlings

Starlings swarming wind sung was sung by the Chapin aloud 
For all crew to hear
in that perfect and permanent cloud the voice of the Chapin came
Above what was only then a huge wave to cover the ship in whole
Never really this photograph- just in lost mesmerizes
But in always all the passing now
And noise and stink and smoky breath of the crew as the Chapin cave the campaigned

Wee boys, a duchess, bunting, there’s a storms take to Ur life boats
Big launch on the Clyde
And that boat is yet too sailed onto the end of the storm to survive.

By Jack Sorenson