The wind is in from Africa - AGAIN

There is a hard, a merciless, desiccating wind blowing out side. It carries parts of Africa on its mantle and wears an alien sulphurous cloak wrapped about itself. It is ripping at the young olive blossom and tearing the blooms from the immature cherry trees we had hoped would fruit this season. It's a wind that makes men mad and women depressed. It's a fighting wind: it with you as you try to move and you with everyone else thereafter. It is a deafening screecher and it drags cries of pain from all it touches. The cowl atop the stove pipe whinnies. A howl escapes the shutters. The glass in the kitchen windows knocks and groans wishing only for escape. And us, we say, where is our escape?