Summer Storm

She's sure that there’s nothing the matter
though the spark in her eye is dead.
Rebecca still has her nightshirt on
but there's nothing wrong (she said).

There’s a distant drama of sirens,
a lorry battling the hill,
and somewhere - beneath these passing sounds -
there's an absence that's louder still.

The sky lies crumpled about us,
expectantly still and warm.
There's the echoless hush you sometimes get
with a threatening summer storm.

So, childishly shy of our whispers
and of questions too hard to ask,
we study the dregs in our empty mugs
and hope for the cloud to pass.

But the storm hasn’t come, nor its salty rain.
Just a dozen magnetic words
lie spent on the fridge as our thoughts are spun
to the silence of the birds.

John Wood

If you have any thoughts on this poem,  John Wood   would be pleased to hear them.