Sunsets and Silencers

"Plagues" and "Remembering the Great Storm of '87"
by Christian Ward

Plagues

Days now,
this freakish weather:
frogs falling like hail,
followed by fish and locusts;

the daily emptying of shoes
leaving a more pleasant taste
in our mouths than prayer.

We cast off the words
as if they were unwanted bones,
leaving them to disintegrate.

I hear them flapping late
at night, like headless fish
gasping for air; the taste
of the ocean.

Remembering the Great Storm of '87

The oaks in Hyde Park
slumped like dumped mattresses;
the moon's face in the broken
window, a smashed teacup.
Rivulets of veins in the fallen
leaves formed new lakes. I held
these memories for decades,
feeling their hurricane touch
lifting me in sleep. The nostalgia
gone now, its empty weight dimpling
the bedsheet like a pebble holding
down a lake.

Christian Ward is currently working as a writer in London, UK. Christian's work has appeared in The Emerson Review, The Kenyon Review and elsewhere.