Last Storm

Phase 1:
The rain was eating the world

The acid drops falling into attack

At first they had been glistening

Sparkling clear, like giant glass tears

So beautiful a child held out his tongue

But then they had began frightening the flowers, puckering holes in their pastel petals

They made the crisp paint coats of houses stream in desperate colorful tears

The roads filled, like acid rivers

Rivers that no sail could survive

The world dissolving, right before my very eyes

Like a canvas being erased from inside its frame

I was running with my umbrella

Clear plastic hexagon on a handle

Hovering Above my head

Like an insect’s stretched out wings

Sheltering me from the storm

My magic umbrella

My rain boots pacing faster, acid avoiding my eyes

Getting to the silva garden

The silva garden was dripping in cobwebs

Shining like stretched strings of ice sickles

Medinal mushrooms formed in clusters

Dirty and distinct

My head was spinning from the odor

The silva garden’s sleeping spell overcoming me

A lightening bolt cracked outside

Splitting the sky into two

Toxic clouds steaming into the atmosphere

Phase Two:

Toxic air

The animals breathing in its chemistry

Their eyes growing wild

The barks leaping from their vocal chords

In short snaps at first

Then as the insanity ensues, stretched energy

Howling, growling, wild

Ravenous

The humans locking their doors

My heart still beating

Like a drum

Searching for silva

The garden encased like a giant glass box

Holding the plant that ends the storm

Me like a fish in a bowl, separated from the rest of the world

Trying to find the silva

To save it

My eyes searching

The silva daisy lying somewhere in this glass greenhouse

Each time, to be found in a different place

Like lightening, never striking in the same place twice

Silva never grows in the same place twice

Once plucked, reappears somewhere else

Wherever you would least suspect

Somewhere in this garden

My eyes dry and stinging,

My hair tangled and tired

My clothes with poked holes from where tiny droplets of acid rain hit

Raggedy

The poisonous plants begging me to touch them

Like Eve and the apple

The dirt has no daisy

No silva to be found

But then

The water pool

Cool and placid

Like a mill pond

I dive in

Silver catching my eye

The daisy, like any daisy

Except silver

Lying untouched at the bottom of the pond

My hand plucks it

I had dove in like a mermaid

I emerged like an animal

On a mission

I escape the greenhouse doors

I pluck the silva petals, scattering them into the rain

As a hungry dog approaches me, morphed like a wolf

Mid leap its teeth about to sink into my neck

The silva petals pressed flat by the rain into the concrete

The acid burning my skin

Phase 3:

And then

Relief

The rain sweet like lilacs and water

Me turning into circles as the dog presses me with wet sloppy kisses

The rainbow shining, an upside-down smile

The plants glistening and growing

The birds chirping, their voices light like silhouettes

The world in harmony

Children running out of their houses

The animals rolling in the grass, the woodlands

Me, standing, left holding the silver stem

Tears rolling down my cheeks

How many times would I have to do this?

My mouth like a bow

My hands like a lotus

How many times would I have to stop the chaos?

More tears

Phase 3: The Maker's Forest

Then, giant hands scooping me up

My body the length of the pinky

The giant hands without arms

Stretched out to me from the sky

Carrying me

Across forests and fields

I peer over the thumb

Passing over deserts and oceans

A tiny breeze tugging at my hair

Sleep overtaking me

How many times will I have to stop the chaos?

Dissolving into my dreams

Like a tiny doll in my makers hands

I wake up in darkness

Except for a crack of sunlight, smiling in

I’m in a sphere enclosure

My hands tear at the two walls of the split

Breaking open the egg I was in

The soft segments of the shell lying in cracked pieces around me

I am in a nest, with three other eggs

A nest high up in a tree

I climb down the tree

Branch by branch

I am in the Maker’s forest

The Maker’s healing forest

I have heard before we have a Maker

But I never believed it

How could I

If we had a maker, why would our world keep falling apart

Why would I keep having to retrieve the silva daisy to remedy it

I walk down the forest path, getting closer to the sky blue cottage

The path is lined with evergreens, redwoods, trees tall and high

Filled with hundreds of nests and eggs

Phase 5: The Maker's Paint Studio

I open the white picket gate

And a painter emerges

Dressed in off-white overalls and an apron, carrying a brush with a tip of ruby pink paint

No words yet

Just sparkling blue eyes, shaggy grey hair, and old creased skin

I catch sight of myself in the reflection of a puddle and gasp

My lips are ruby pink like a bow

My skin is healed like porcelain

My hair is soft and silky, falling in waves down my summer dress

The whole forest is bright and shining

How did I come to look like this

How did I come to heal so fast?

Why is this forest so beautiful

Come with me

The painter says

I step inside, the room filled with pallets of paint and aisles

The walls covered like canvases

In illustrations and images

The golden desert I passed over on one wall

The sparkling ocean whose breeze tugged my hair on the next

And on the canvas, me

I’m standing there, the silver stem in my hand

But the world around me, its not falling apart and dissolving

Its beautiful

I look at the painter

The chaos I say

I can’t take it anymore

I tell him 

This world you paint

It pains me

Paint something prettier

Don’t ever paint a storm again

Why can’t you always paint the pretty picture on the canvas?

That’s the world I want to live in

But I do, the painter replies

His eyes kind

But I am not the only painter

He says looking at me

My illustrations, he smiles

The people I paint,

They can paint too

And the world you see,

Sometimes it’s the world you paint

You mean, the storm? I painted it?

He smiles

It wouldn’t be very fair if I was the only one allowed to paint now would it?

"How do I stop? How do I stop painting storms?

I don’t ever want to leave this pretty forest"

He faces a white canvas, starts painting a tiny girl

Sometimes what we see, he says

Its more of a reflection of what could be, of our minds eye, than what is really there

Storms do happen of course

But the storm you see and save

Is the storm of your mind

Let me ask you something

Are you afraid?

Yes, I reply

And what are you afraid of?

Well everything, I reply.

There is so much to be afraid of

Then that is what you are seeing, he says

Free yourself

Of all nonexistent time, of what could be and what was

And just be exactly where you are

And you will see things as they really are

Your paintings will add the beautiful details to my paintings

With that the, little girl, the one with the short brown hair and pink dress steps off the canvas

She smiles at us

And then opens the cottage door, her ruby lips and blue eyes taking in the forest around her, walking further into it

Phase 6: The Storm of your Eye

And then I’m back, with my hexagonal umbrella

Running to the silva garden

Acid rain splashing around me

Instead though, I stop

The world doesn’t need the silva, I hear my Maker say

The silva isn’t even real

I stop and close my eyes

Forget my doubts

And everything that could go wrong

I forget everything

The blood running through my veins, the splashing acid, the storming clouds

My minds goes blank

When I open my eyes

The world is quiet

Then I hear the sweet chirping of birds singing

Children playing

An old man walking his dog

“Looks like it might rain” he says, pointing to a far away cloud

I close my umbrella

I won’t be needing it

~ JL

 

This poem is about: 
Me
Our world

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