Dream twenty four: in the funnel

I lean in from a cloud,
spying this lake of slate,
in the never evergreen bush.
The sunny side has big boats three,
yachting this shiny blue day.
Merrymakers loll on the decks.
Shapely girls lean out on the prow rails,
icons of the Titanic.
I hear their cries and laughter
over the gulls.
In my monstrous vertebrae I feel,
from southern climes,
the approach of electric grey,
with green barely seen.
No weather master am I,
and so I take a lungful of fluffy steam,
stadium-sized,
to blow a Southwind warning.
On deaf ears it falls.
They jeer at the momentary gale,
for I cannot blot the sun.
And then, the sounding storm.
The waters riddled with rain.
They scurry like aimless ants,
furling sails.
The stormfront’s infantry:
three vacuum funnels,
all of contrast sharp,
all of bright chrome.
Slowly they revolve at the outset.
Then, of a sudden, they part ranks at speed,
like silver balls released in a trice
by pinball plunger.
I fear for the fate of the four score on deck.
The spouts harass the boats,
like bothering bees,
and there is much terror and clinging.
They do a devil dance,
then congregate, as if by design,
at the North’s sandy shore.
Stay, they do.
The mile long lake they suck and spew,
into the clouds, as fine as dew.
And the sailors of the weekend?
Their upright ships do gently rest
at lower elevations.
Stuck in the mucky silt of centuries.