H.D. speaks directly to the storm as if it were a living force, describing how it slams into trees and snaps a live branch. The details are sharp and physical: the pale broken wood, the crushed green leaves torn like split wood. She makes the wind feel almost deliberate in its destruction, loading the branches with heavy black rain before swirling and breaking off a single leaf. That leaf becomes the poem’s most striking image—tossed upward, then sinking down “like a green stone,” fragile yet suddenly solid and heavy. The speaker’s tone is not calm; it is tense, watchful, and a little awed. The mood is harsh and immediate, as if the reader is standing right inside the wind’s path, feeling how quickly a storm can turn something alive into something broken.
Storm — Summary
You crash over the trees, you crack the live branch-- the branch is white, the green crushed, each leaf is rent like split wood. You burden the trees with black drops, you swirl and crash-- you have broken off a weighted leaf in the wind, it is hurled out, whirls up and sinks, a green stone.