Tom Myers

WE ARE THE WEATHER TOURISTS

We keep old cars in the yard
without wheels or windows
like empty turtle shells in a row.

We fill an old rowboat with grain
every morning around eleven
and let the cows have at it.

We say we’re good
with plants, but we’re not,
and in the fields, we stop and wonder

about what we might have in common
with the wolves we hear at night, or
with the men we’ve met who hunt them.

We even wonder what we have
in common with each other,
and why we ever moved out here.

We don’t know our neighbors,
and when we run out of sugar
we take the truck into town.

Sometimes we lose our donkey,
then find him again, grazing
by the barn, useless as ever.

We give ourselves these false names
time to time, like: the wild farmers,
the hillbilly artists—now we go by

the weather tourists. Every day
we sit in a field, and with bits of chalk
draw the clouds on bits of cardboard.

Every night we stay inside the house,
writing notes on the backs of tiny mirrors,
then telling the story of the black-nosed Buddha,

a story about a nun and her gold statue,
about smoke and selfishness,

a story we all know, a story we all tell,
a story about wanting, but not bad enough.

–from Rattle #33, Summer 2010

§ 2 Responses to “We Are the Weather Tourists” by Tom Myers

• 2011 01 11 | verse per se says:

  January 11, 2011 at 2:19 pm

  [...] We Are the Weather Tourists — Tom Myers [Rattle♥] – “…wanting, but not bad enough.” [...]

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• Michael Hartford » The Weather Tourists #poem says:

  January 11, 2011 at 7:13 pm

  [...] The Weather Tourists by Tom Myers [...]

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