The weather walks away.
Another century
meant something else,
the sway of beast back
sloping through the field
but we, ah we
are abstract materialists,
we chant silently,
carry images of images
softly from now to then.
And then is very far.

2.
Subs have periscopes
but what have we?
The weather only
hints at what’s around us,
what’s to come.
And when the weather walks away
we sit indoors, transcribing
ignorance into interesting books.

3.
Century after century.
I was a Roman augur once,
haruspex, bird flight,
not very good at it but still
it was a job, and every day,
weather has no weeks,
the birds keep coming back.

4.
In the tile rooves of Provence
the dormice live, little
animals called ‘sleepers’
harmless as a beast dare be.
And in thatched rooves
even more at home.
And where do we sleep
at peace, beneath which roofs?
I like the old word best,
makes me feel young again–
in Brooklyn we had rooves when I grew up.

5.
Enough geography.
It’s Christ Mass day
(speaking of old words)
and the spell-checker
gives me a hard time.
I want the word the way it was
when He was still in it
and we could hear it,
if not His name at least
the adjective they knew Him by.

6.
Because language is our weather.
The storms of it release
sometimes a simple day,
call it whatever you like,
a quiet now tucked inside
the rush of onward. A word.
Maybe somebody’s true name.
But I would never tell.

7.
Noon on Christmas day.
The snow has melted.
The rams and ewes
and lambs and wethers
are safe snug over the hill.
The Magi have come and gone,
a hint of frankincense
left in their wake. Or is it myrrh
from a new-endangered tree?
Or is it the air itself?
Slowly the light is coming back.