‘Beaufort’s Scale’ – by Barbara Daniels

Gale force wind bursts the blown-mad

cardinals’ nest.  Flung burdocks leap

among flailing tendrils to pound

on the windows.  In your room

a bronze griffin alert on a wine bowl,

beak gaping.  Mirrors, chinoiserie.

Do you remember the day, love,

when all the trees were iced with cracking

glassware, cold stars?  Blue lights

gleamed in the scattering breakage,

lustrous balefire, dark lanterns,

their sliding panels ruptured.

Do both of us need the reckless beauty

of excess, descants leaping high above melodies,

ornaments brighter than song?  Or is it

precision we crave from the beautiful?

The careful gradations of Beaufort’s meticulous

scale: light air, moderate breeze, whole gale?

In this thundering, flowers fray.

Their doubled lips split to bearded stamens.

Are lies, after all, dear, what we live by?

Can I fail to call what I did duplicity?

Or stand in the shattering while all

that shined in us bursts and falls away?