I only knew one Eunice in my life, and she lived long enough to get a birthday letter from the queen I have a covid fever am afraid I’m not doing well I’m deaf with snot, thank God, to hear it all would- anyway afraid of losing trees and roofs and fencing in the storm. Storm Eunice has arrived she’s singing whiney songs down to the hearth clinking wood-burner stove timpani and I’m afraid the wind will blow the chimney down I see it crashing through the roof it hits bed and kills the cat afraid the roof tiles will lift off fly sideways down and hit a car.
The fact is - I have felt this many times before - I fear the wind. That time when hinge-ing from its final fixings like a big square wooden box lid that six-foot fencing on the border threatened to fly free alone then in my DIY incompetence, my neighbour laughed at me I tried to haul it free to lay it flat before it flew who knows what damage hundred mile an hour fence panels can do I tucked my chin into my chest and wore some gloves as if they gave me power struck on the face by rain I ripped and wrenched it wrestled it to horizontal next-door man looked on. And then I flew. The wind came underneath the panel was a square flat kite took off with me attached like Super Ted.
We landed by a plum tree, me face-down, the panel looking innocent I’d travelled seven metres. My neighbour laughing still.
That I am powerless against the storm, that laughter at me is the inevitable choral strain is what I fear
Storm Eunice is a siren. I picture wreckage way before it comes.
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