Entertaining Fates

MORE ABOUT THE WEATHER

In an air of almost after rain,
our market forecast, moral climate,
she had said, 'It makes you want,'
considering me, 'to emigrate
- on account of this weather,
or the politics.' I thought:
some random, unfathomable
signs in the one of them -
though surely not the other.

O love, where is your home?
Torrential stormlight; droplets
cradle on a spider's web
across a leak-pooled window sill
and, captured, glisten there.
Damp outcrops bubble
through yellowed emulsion, flare
up; she's overcast, 'I'm trapped
in my marriage, my job, the very air!'

With time blue patches should appear,
repopulating wooden tables
of garden centres, pubs and parks.
It could reform, our sky, to mix
the clear with the obscure -
as though lit outdoor faces
were to show both self-esteem and care.
Then I might say, 'You like it here?'
And she would answer, 'Sure,
though not the politics.'

Published in Pequod nos. 26-7, 1989.
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