poem by Peter Cloud Panjoyah: Force of Nature
This may have been the first of the poems that Tempest’s death has inspired… Peter posted it on his Facebook page the very next day. With his permission, I’m reposting here:
Force of Nature
Gale force winds blow the teardrop rain brutally
Sideways, like the course of many hearts today
No teapot will contain this Tempest, it is too big and wild
And freer from fleshly constraints than she would choose
For she inhabited her Earthly clothes more fully
Than hundreds of less vital storms
And blew your house down time and again
Stiltwalking and stomping across screaming stages
Commanding our attention with an ever-opening voice
Plucked banjo strings or electric squalls
Goose down heart obvious under that windy bluster
Which the elements at hand could never obscure
Blowing open doors to rooms we would never otherwise enter
Taken out at twenty five, so achingly alive
Was planning to live forever
Today the dinosaur puppet skeletal remains of our façade
Crack and crumble to dust
As we entrain with her and float boneless
In tidepools of griefby Peter Cloud Panjoyah

