Torrential

Sam Plummer

Torrential, sun-streaked

Drawing across the paddies like a veil

Buckling banana leaves and awnings.

Kaleidoscopic pagoda roofs cascade into lily ponds

Nourishing paddies, revitalizing rivers.

Life-giving and eternal.

Torrential, lightning-blitzed

Smothering the city like a shroud

Scattering motorbikes and lives.

Thundering off veranda roofs to shatter the neon reflections

Flushing sewage, plastic and dreams.

Dark and ominous.

Torrential.

The monsoon tests our lives.

Washing our bastions downstream

to be reclaimed by culture

reclaimed by nature.

It’s torrential outside

sisyphean and miserable. 

I shouldn’t be alone.

I should be with family, friends

comfort and cheer

to deflect the hopelessness

of building monuments in foreign lands.

Instead, a pen and a bottle of whisky.

Who else can save their souls? Save mine?