The Storm

Dark sky; ominous, billowing clouds. An eerie wind rustles through the bushes like a warning to life. Nothing else but a deathly silence quivering with the passage of time. Not a bird twitter, nor a dog bark. No motion from the row of houses along the beach head.

Even the footprints in the sand are now erased from existence. The wind twirls in the dunes, sending spirals of silica to lash at one another like medieval ghosts on the battlefield.

Wind against sand; sand against leaf and twig; branches flailing wildly in defense against an unseen foe. Grasses yield, bowing before the omnipotent force. Resistence is futile. Death and destruction is nigh. Submission, the only hope.

Light! Bright! The heavens aflame with bolts of electricity. The resounding crack of thunder follows. Lightning streaming across the horizon, dancing on the rising sea. Wretched fireflies swarming in mass to attack.

Waves rush onto the beach, seeping through weed and debris. Trying to escape from oncoming onslaught. They crash and pound against the weathered groin. The rocks have faced this enemy many times before. Just as before, they refuse to succumb this time also. They will not yield though the waves are relentless.

Crack! Boom! The heavens open and unleash a torrent of rain upon the earth and sea. The ocean rises up to warmly greet its kin, absent for too long. Waves peak; stretching and dragging the droplets of life's pure essence back to their home.

The thirsty earth inhales the precipitation, greedily absorbing ever droplet as if it were the last of its kind. Heavy droplets smash into the dry soil leaving craters as if from a meteorite shower.

Soon the land is awash. Tiny rivers form from every dune top or grassy knoll. Streaming down through the gullies and small valleys. Winding and converging in a race back towards the sea. Rivulets and streams combine at every new junction, flowing with greater and greater force.

No longer content with its own passage, the water drags with it leaf and litter from around the base of each bush. It sweeps away the sand, revealing naked gnarled roots, threatening to remove the foundations of the green infrastructure. Challenging the sanctity of life.

Destruction and chaos in a micro level. Life upheaved by wind and rain. Yet the irony of the new life it creates is not lost. Nature is an irony. From death there is new life.