Like a Cold Wind

Like a cold wind

 

 

Like a cold wind on a summer’s day

Raising a crop of goose-flesh;

Like a cloud across the sun’s face

Turning the day into sudden twilight,

I feel the change inside me

And I wait to see if the cloud may pass.

 

Like the sudden silence before a storm,

The birds that cease to sing;

Like the eerie stillness of wild-life

Before the earth shakes and the sea flees,

I hear the roar of the angry waves

Rushing towards me to engulf the land.

 

Like the blank blink in the bully’s eye

The second before he raises a fist;

Like the juddering engine before it stalls

Leaving you stranded at the lights,

It warns of worse to come

And teaches you how to duck.

 

When the fog comes floating in from the sea

It’s time to sit down and wait

Turn on the lights, wrap up warm

Stay just where you are; do not fight.

For like fog, and darkness and the bully’s wrath

This too, like all things, shall pass.