Thunderclouds

The peaks frown like towers, no longer playful cotton

Covering blue and starlight at three am while I speed

back from Madras just past the Nicobars. Lights off Aceh.

Then darkness is back. We flee storm chambers like lamps

Yellow-white with clarity in villages dried down to embers.

I fear falling many feet with pressed hands, eyes shut

Anything but that God, that tumble through the sky

I pray as the pilots slip between those massifs

Loaded with the thunder we feel but cannot see

The cabin is quiet and everyone sleeps but me

Then the Malacca Straits and soon morning on water

We are safe at port. Safe now but who knows after.