Wild Moment: Jell Ellis

A short poem inspired by the majesty of a storm while running in woods

Windrunning

Windstorm pummels beechwood high above me.
Autumnbrown leaves shudder, strain, rip, fall, shower down through stormtossed branches to swirl above the forest floor and across my path.

I just run.

A brutal gust roars. Distant. Now closer, louder, bursting overhead.
Beechbough wood cracks, ripped from its trunk, falling in a chaos of noise and branchclatter and groundcrash. A hundred years of togetherness gone, discarded in the wake of the unseeing storm.
I hear the destruction and look up, wondering at the wild swaying branches above me.

And I run.

Water joins air as the rain hits. Noise intensifying, battering, engulfing the woods and its creatures.
Unseen deer huddle, thicket deep. Birds hunker, silent.
The sharp greysong hiss of rain hits the leaves and ground and my shoulders and hair and reverberates in my ears.

I run.

The edgewoods open out, protective hawthorns and hazels fall away behind me, and I’m bitten by stormteeth.
Head down. Hair slick. Body pummelled. Wetface.
Eyes slitted against the hardsoft cut of water.
Focus on the path ahead.

I can feel nature’s boundless chaotic force, her careless intensity.  

Feel small.
Feel part of it.
Feel alive.
Feel myself look up and smile into the wind.

And I run.

© Jell Ellis - January 2020