Bluster

     I awoke in the wee hours of the morning to the sound of the wind shouting to get in. I usually feel quite friendly toward this visitor and his brethren, even the overblown ones, but this time he was pounding on the door like a drunken sailor. My normally placid windchime was ringing a frantic warning. When I peeked out the bedroom window, I saw that my lovely wintercreeper, clinging tenaciously to the corner of the garage beside my front walk for over twenty years, had been cruelly ravaged and thrown to the ground.

     Such piratical behavior is not welcome here. So I kept my door firmly shut against the loudmouthed marauder, but as the windows continued to rattle and wave after wave of tide-wind slammed against the house in fits of rage, I must confess to a little trembling beneath all of my bravado.

A furore septemtriones libera nos, Domine

From the fury of the northwind, Oh Lord deliver us!

     I was alone in the house. It was dark, still several hours until dawn. And I most certainly could not go back to sleep. So I sat in a cosy room furthest from the sound of the wind cracking its blustering cheeks and crocheted a winter scarf striped with echoes of the Aurora Borealis.

Wild wind, sail me away

Over the greensward sea,

My bark and I shall leap the sky

And toss upon the lea.

Mad wind, bear me away

Across the grassy tide,

Break thy steed o'er the coursing mead

Mount where the corbie rides!

                                                                         ~ Nib of Nib's End ~