THE RELIGION OF WEATHER
I am a weather girl. Always have been,
charting cold fronts at breakfast like it was church. Over Cheerios,
squall lines barreled like holyrollers through the kitchen.
Daddy on the radio, the telephone, with Flight Service,
weather beckoning. Used to wish I was a lighting rod, so I’d answer.
Got a Siberian Express for Valentines
one year, brought snow. February’s isobars like power
lines to a teeming city, whiteflake-chatter
on the lines advancing, marching neat
as teeth across topographies, Louisiana in a candy box.
Only girl I know, except my sisters, can talk
about the backside of a high, or what a thunderbuster’s thinking
in its pretty anvil, how to grade the hail by size, what rides
Alberta’s Clippers like a cushmar, or why the east
wind’s quiet, a zephyr always soft.
Altocumulus, altostratus, pray for us. Cirrocumulus, cirrostratus,
cirrus, grant us peace. Cumulonimbus, stratus, girl,
stratus, nimbus, thundercloud. All dark pearls
or white, building their litany to fall in love with the answer.
All ye holy orders of blessed Spirits, be for us.
—from Rattle #14, Winter 2000
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Marilynn Fournet Adams: “At 52, I am a graduate student at the University of Louisiana-Lafayette, who just learned that you don’t have to take your clothes out of the dryer when the buzzer sounds. I write poetry because it suits my ADHD brain.” (web)
