Weather Observations

            There’s Something in the Air

 

Stephen R. Roberts

 

The rain’s stopped falling

out of  a dingy sky for now.

Sun’s not out yet, but could be

if cloud cover pulls off real soon,

 

moves out of here before nightfall

when I won’t be able to tell much about

what’s coming next. Though if the wind blows, 

I’ll hear it through the cracks when the house shifts.

 

I can stick my elbow out the bathroom window to figure out

what coat to wear down to the barn, if it’s standing, come morning.

If it’s not, most likely there’s been one more twister in the dark.

A lot of buildings have been lost like that. Just sucked away.

 

That’s how I got my bathroom  when the outhouse disappeared.

Never was fond of an outhouse anyway. Or Prather’s pig,

for that matter, which also up and dispersed in pieces.

Two hundred pounds of pork minced through Red Top,

spread over the county like scum over a fishpond.

 

Sediments off the sky might’ve caused this weather.

Pollution and global warming produced the off-kilter,

five-legged frogs we have around here now

down at the creek, that hardly sing anymore

and can’t hop worth a damn.

 


Stephen R. Roberts has had poems published in Rain City Review, Sulphur River Review, Blackwater, Black River Review, Talking River Review, WaterStone,  Riverrun, Connecticut River Review, and, to get away from all the moisture,  Dry Creek Review. His two most recent chapbooks are Small Fire Speaking In The Rain (Talent House Press, 1998) and Rhubarb DeSoto (Pudding House Publications, 2004).  He lives a retired life on eight acres of Hoosier soil, pretending it to be wilderness.

 

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