The Sky slouched deeper into its seat,
Deeper into its sulk
Brooding upon it with all the sullen energy it could muster.
No childish mood, this,
But a full-blown, storm-force, adult depression
Where the initial impulse
Had long since bowed
Before the critical mass of its consequence.
The sky seemed to be taking a perverse pleasure
In its own discomfort
Growling under its breath its ‘couldn’t care less’ distain
For anything incapable of feeding
The slowly spinning whirlpool of weariness
Into which it was losing itself.
Greys collected themselves from the Four Winds
And were mixed with quiet yet evil intent
Upon Sky’s unusually bare, monochrome palette:
More black - less white
More black - less white
Their sadistic spell cast,
Chanting, Hecate-like,
Upon almost still, malevolent air
Which seemed to suck the life out of the sound of the world below.
Seagulls wheeled across the blackening blue-grey,
Intense white arcs thrown into stark relief:
Gracefully-embraced freedom
Against hulking, lumbering, self-imposed captivity.
The weight of water above surely heralded
Depression’s inevitable terminus in torrents of rage or tears,
Yet no.
The heart went out of it,
Boredom set in
And Sky simply couldn’t be bothered to stoke its storm any longer
And fell back, fed up, without the will to concentrate it to a conclusion.
Not quite giving up.
Not quite letting go.
Not yet anyway.
A little white found its way into the blackest grey, but not very far.
There was still a lot of black on the palette knife
For when the Sky had a mind.
[20.11.03]
Tony Jolley
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/sulking-sky/
