If you didn’t know what a storm is
This thing will enter
your perception with a swagger.
Kick open doors, slam wood
to wall, shake rooms,
with the impatient knock
of nature. Alive, but not exactly,
as it fills the frame, flicker-lit
by lightning. Lank wild hair,
beneath a tricorn hat:
a weather buccaneer
in untucked shirt.
Atmosphere’s dishevelled ghost,
blown in by itself. Forcing you
to check the bangs outside
are not detonating bombs.
Peek through every window,
pray no chunk of sky has broken
off, there’s been no landslide
in the air. As you’re confronted
by the fact of sudden darkness
– a visual fanfare for arriving rain,
which flies down hissing, pulsing
like a swarm of liquid wasp.
You can’t take that for granted,
as it rips across the street, pours itself
into the slack jaws of sewers.
Let’s slip its siren song, calling us
to choose between base instincts:
go on run out, embrace the downpour,
or shrink inside, not wanting to be wet.
Matt Gilbert is from Bristol, but currently lives in South London. His work has appeared in various publications, including Northern Gravy, Stand and Southword. His debut collection Street Sailing was published by Black Bough Poetry in 2023. @richlyevocative: Instagram/X