Like the Weather

Love like the weather.
It drips, it soaks, it floods,
then evaporates and the sky is empty again.

So muggy you don't want to go out,
but lie on your unmade bed with the AC
chewing up the silence.

Zero visibility, fog, nothing but fog.

Such a wind that picks up any spark
and sets it rampaging.

Such a wind that impales cowhide with straws,
and lifts up houses and careens them
into the hereafter,
while you crouch in the cellar,
your bones singing like tuning forks.

An evening when the sun is a red hot clinker
on the black horizon; when sweat rises
like lava from every pore.

A below-zero morning when it seems
a new Ice Age is whitening your breaths.

What we want that we didn't want
yesterday: fresh snow,
a break in the cloud-cover,
early thaw, sunshine, sunshine, sunshine,
the end of the drought.

The first thing we have to know in the morning
and the last thing we fret about at night:
Will it or won't it, how much and when and for how long,
and how come the weatherman
got it so blasted wrong
yet again?