{"sf1_id":1705594,"sf2_id":"k1VJxN1l","title":"Scattered Thundershowers This Afternoon","author":"Rob MacWolf","words":269,"posted_at":"2021-04-11T17:33:00.000Z","tags":["Ballade","Poetry"],"url":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/1705594-scattered-thundershowers-this-afternoon","original_url":"https://sofurry.com/s/k1VJxN1l","image_url":"https://cdn.sofurryfiles.com/submissions/thumbnails/68/1f/681f39e1-4c2b-4a72-b319-a84638179ba8","description":"#26 of poetry\n\nNot gonna lie, some of these are still pretty good, in my opinion.\nThis one might have been a signpost, looking back, that had I been able to see it at the time would have read \"dude, you're not a Christian, you're already praying to thunderstorms, stop pretending.\" But I was young, and still too busy pretending I wasn't gay, to notice such things.","content":"The forecast didn't call for principalities and powers.  \nIn toppling heaps of alabaster balanced overhead  \nThey hung, silently swelling, for apprehensive hours,  \nFilled full with holy water and rejuvenating dread.  \nSomebody called down judgment on the living and the dead  \nIn faceless white serenity, the lurid hues washed out  \nBelow, ice-prism halos above each thunderhead.  \nLet us set up a candlemas for when the power goes out.\n\nThe chill cherubic captain stands horizonward in thought.  \nHis helm has pierced the stratosphere. His robes cascading flow  \nOff stature titanic, of mist and waterfall's spray wrought,  \nDown, down like cold wet cloth upon the fevered land below.  \nHe billows and he bellows, forth he raises his hand slow  \nAs avalanches. And his wings unfurl. Upon our drought,  \nFrom them will drip deep dew, by golden sunlight set aglow.  \nLet us set up a candlemas for when the power goes out.\n\nI hope for silver seraphim of welterwind and shade.  \nI pray marble colossuses drift ponderous overhead.  \nI call their thunderous footstep to hasten ere I fade.  \nEach helpless life with hateful heat the afternoon has bled-  \nEach breath out of my body with humidity like lead-  \nSweep out this swamp of haze! O come O come oh waterspout:  \nMy sullen sweat is hunger, your coolness clean is bread.  \nLet us set up a candlemas for when the power goes out.\n\nPrince, the air conditioning will never save your soul.  \nThe summer overpowers it, and smothers it in doubt.  \nBut wrath and rapture from the sky are coming to console:  \nLet us set up a candlemas for when the power goes out.\n\n  \n\n  \n  \n\n","series":{"name":"poetry","previous":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/1705589-ballade-of-three-birds.json","next":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/1705609-the-cheshire-cat.json"}}