Thunderhead

The clouds above reverse-age themselves as I watch, from wispy balding thin white strands to the deep purple-black of the middle years. Like the great black slab of Hephaistos, they promise the work of lightning and thunder from the mountains of the air.

And I hear the hammer of the Armourer, I hear the pounding of the Smith, and I realise that Zeus crippled his son out of fear — for who wields the thunderbolt without one who makes them? and who guards his life with a shield and does not trust its maker?

Deep in the caverns of the world, the plates buckle and fold. The hammer rises and falls and the anvil is the quenching water of the sky come down. I cannot get that movement out of my mind, that almost mechanical round of action and reaction.

Some day, technology will make a world, they say. But look! Look around you, and see the technology that IS a world, the seemingly-endless cycles of destruction and rebirth!

High above, the invisible hammer of a hundred thousand Pascals flattens the sky into silver sheets against the blackness of the thundercloud.