‘On the day of your birth’
Grandma said ‘there
Was a great storm
That tore out the light -
At nightfall the whip
Of the jet sting speared
Uprooted oaks at windows
Bricks hammered cars
Into odd new shapes
The heads were all shorn off
My ready-for-November rosebush
The wetwind coiled around
Itself like a stepped on adder’
My mother shook her head
The winds calmed to a draft
This history is false
It missed by a year
A whole year of fingers
Growing like fork lightning
Hands clapping like thunder
Bad wind that makes the mothers
Laugh and the fathers proud
To have made these weird balls
Of flesh and of gas
Grandma nods and says
‘On the day of your birth
There was a great storm
And it tore out the light’
