Perfect Weather
Aug 23 2020
When it's perfect weather day after day
I find myself wishing for rain.
We need change
while also dreading it.
We crave novelty
no matter how ill-prepared.
Because sameness arrests time.
As lethargic
as a muggy day
it seems to move lazily, aimlessly
glacially slow
back to where it started.
Awakening, again
and lounging in bed
in the stuffy hot-house air,
thinking here we go once more
and will this ever end?
You imagine lightning, blizzards, hurricane winds
hail, freezing rain.
Anything ...but this
numbing Eden
of sun and warmth and bliss.
The sin of ingratitude, I know.
How good fortune makes us complacent,
how easily
we find ourselves bored.
Yet how I relish the coming storm.
When I'll go out in the rain
and turn to face heaven
and greedily drink it in;
hair slicked down,
wet clothes
shrink-wrapped tight around me.
My feet squish-squishing
through puddles and mud
as a chilly wind picks up.
A break in the weather
and time has begun
and it will soon be another month.
The coming season
like a tempting beacon
beckoning us ever on.
I don't envy people who live in places like San Diego, where they could just as well tape record the weather report and replay it every day. How boring. How unappreciative I'd soon become. How I'd not only wish for a change, but crave the adversity and challenge of bad weather: that feeling of triumph you get battling a tough winter, as well as the delicious coziness of being storm-stayed in a raging blizzard. I imagine the movie Groundhog Day, awakening to the same unremitting sun and warmth, feeling as if time had stopped. As if there were no landmarks or milestones. As if you were at sea, going nowhere except on and on.
I know this because even though summer is ending too fast and feels too short (which it is, this far north), I find myself anticipating the coming fall. ...Just a little, anyway. And after a good long Indian summer, of course! (Or is"Indian summer" now regarded as politically incorrect? ...Really? Even this?!!)
No comments:
Post a Comment