[Alex Pepple]

Weather Girl


She is a weather girl,
knows her clouds.
She wields her clouds
as they will her.
The accumulating cumulus,
the nimble nimbus, she mumbles.

She watches
their to-and-fro rub in
patches of blushing joy
across the sky.
Her wind song jukeboxes
the happy hours.

She loves the spread
of a dust-saddled plain, going minimal
in that scheme, one lost Fragonard,
the sky on top aquiver, huge,
the wind’s missive on her skin.

She’s found another
lover of weather.

He loves his sky with clouds.
He would watch two clouds
beside themselves, hands flashing
rags rub-stroke-rub the sky; O the agony
as they fall apart,
a clump of contrail bruised against the sky.

Next stop: a symphony
of wind-lust—cleaved and clasped
over a Harley, when crows fly into
the wide-mouthed-

O—. Tunnel, wind tunnel, the throes
of your contraptions are deceptive.
Flick this switch: the eddies suck you in.
Flick that switch: the torrents blow you off.

And a pang overwhelms
for the rhythm of windmills.

But, O the evening sky.
O, O the calisthenics of the night sky.

Now, she sees the weather
in everything—through her looking glass,
a diorama of clouds.
She sees the color of temperature,
the needs of weather
when it has no need for us.
Her story forecasts the history of weather.