Gaia visits

There was no flicker,
no rumble,
just a crashing bang.
The house shook,
the window lit blue-white; 
all in an instant.

Too close.  I felt winded.

Rain had been pouring;
the grubby interior
a steady drip-dripping;
dusk had come early.

I’d been drying a plate, wondering 
if the corrida, in the Plaza de Toros
along the street, had been stopped.

I assumed it had.

Torrential rain
may kill the spectacle;
but it spares the bulls.

In the flash-shadow,
four smooth faces stare
from a morning Metro poster,
reminding me the meek 
do not inherit the Earth.
Tech students, new
recruits for the war on Humanity;
Mammon's self-assured elite.

And Gaia herself, I speculate,
whose casual violence visited this
sad facade of whitewashed brick
and washing lines, holds no special place
for her sentimental followers.

Oblivious to these agonies, along the street, 
six bulls survive for twenty-four hours more.