The Japanese anemones don’t know what to do.
They swither and sway, all dusty-pink confusion.
They’ve never met wind like this before,
not at Lughnasadh, in full flower and leaf,
the time of kindly weather.
They’re biddable – they do as they’re told,
whichever way the wind thrusts them –
dance this way, dance that, no resting ...
They waltz, uneasy, outside my kitchen windows,
looking in, as though for an explanation.
The wind rises and rises,
sun hides and seeks as rainclouds
rush across the sky like breathless children,
sowing not rain but a fierce downdraught.
So early in the day, so early in the year,
we’re treated to the gigantic cinema
with all the lights undimmed.
My husband calls from the living room:
they’ve cancelled the Edinburgh Tattoo
for the first time in seventy-five years.
In the garden, my rowan tree shakes her head
in disbelief, her headdress of ripening berries
bristling: the Tattoo, spirit of August? Never!
And the voice of the west wind
shrieks in the chimney
that things are changing, and we
have not done enough to stop them.
That greater storms are coming.
Mandy Macdonald
Aberdeen-based Australian poet Mandy Macdonald still believes that poetry can change the world, but cultivates an allotment just in case. Her work is published in print and online magazines and anthologies in Scotland and beyond. Her second pamphlet, The unreliability of rainbows, was published by Yaffle’s Nest (yafflepress.co.uk) in 2024.