Conversation with a cyclone

It is hard to believe your nerve. We thought you might be coming a little sooner. Now we believe you're not coming at all. You've simply piked. Yes, whimped out, taunting us with your little sidekicks forming somewhere around 90 degrees and sashaying about a little on the spot then drifting off in an always southwesterly directiong before fading, lost in ocean swell. You've had the power of a party popper. All poooof, pffft, a little spray of colour, a little tinkle of dust particles made to step momentarily sideways in the wake of the pithy flutterings of crepe.

This is north west WA, dear cyclone, grand whirling adventurer of the sea and threatener of the coast. It is our time. Aside the cruel fact that we're gagging for your rain, you rehydrate our bones. Mine are wizened now. Waiting, sucking on dry air and swallowing the occasional spit of some renegade cloud. Have you ever felt like a drybaked chicken carcas, cyclone? I am crisp to the touch, my nerves burning electric, singing through the air like power wires strung pole to pole across the landscape.

So, we charge you with negligence. For this is a place of climactic irony. We who choose to force ourselves upon this place accept the blessings of a mild and sunny winter as refreshment, payback for the heat and wildness of summer. But summer, oh summer, summer is God here. Summer is adventure. The true rejuvenation of spirit. Its dramatic contrasts, of thudding heat against the near orgasmic threat of cyclonic travesty, are the blood which thumps through us over these six months. Systole, diastole, dry heat, torrential salvation.

And so, I have a hole in my heart.

You have forsaken us, oh cyclone.

It's not that we necessarily want annihalation - yes, you came with Laurence before we'd had time to shift the calendar to greet you. You mashed a caravan park. You destroyed cows. You wreaked havoc on the unsuspecting and the unprotected before we'd had a chance to settle into your rhythms -but then you abandoned us.

Then again, writing in anger or self pity is never going to tempt you into our longitude now, is it? You always win the argument. So perhaps I should cajole you, tell you how we need and love you. Our backyard does, anyway, the local lopping company having quoted two kidneys to fell the many dead palm branches dotted around our place. You, oh great leveller of the north west, are our only hope. Sure, you'll be messy, but aren't kidneys important for something?

All this dry, dead air is sending me into a spin. Ironic, really. That's your job. But with Robyn faffing about somewhere in the middle of nobody cares where, nobody cares. We do though. We'll take your Robyn, or any STUVW you might cough up in the next 28 days. You know you're a chance. The meteorologists do even if you don't. They're still predicting, 'the possiblity of a cyclone by the end of April'. The clarity of vision is astounding. But, despite its hypnotic vagueness, the fact is, they're correct.

Patch up my heart and you will feed me until November. I need that here. Winter comes. It is long, blue, eternal and already we have lived under dehydrated orbit for near a year. Bruise our skies and stitch us up good before our blood runs dry, oh cyclone.

PS. I bought my daughter The Wizard of Oz to watch on your night of nights. You wouldn't disappoint a four year old now, would you?