Competition

First Prize

Wind
by John Egan

Tonight the house rides on wind-waves.
Branches of great gums roar.
Black breakers of air knock and clash
like divers, an onrush of dumpers.
The house coils in sea-salt, tensings
and flexings of night. The wind-swells
burst in foam, spray like stars.

Tonight the house rides the tempest,
the moon in torrents, a trim clipper
rigging taut in her belly of sails.
Canvass distends a drum-beat mad
rhythm to the rush of the sea. Wind-raked,
tight as wire, old tiles vibrate like masts
in a new, full-rigged clarity of air.

Tonight the house rides on wind-waves,
runs her cold eastings down isobars
of rungs and ladders of falling air.
I sit alert, the very foundations
of brick, rattles of metal and pane. Wood
creaks the waves of gale, the gusts of shudder.

I listen as waves crash in the trees.
She dips her bow and punches through -
the Cutty Sark, the Witch of Endor.
Sail with the wind, run with the tide.
My house rides in a demon's whirlpool,
glides on the storm like a ship of stars.