Dear Weather
Dear weather, what are you?
It’s not the season, but there
he stands: old man in flannel,
burning something. What
does he see, standing there?
What did I? Years since I
loved you. That summer,
a friend threw a birthday party
and was given pink plastic
flamingos, forty of them—
a joke. At night, after drinking,
we gathered them in our arms
and dashed all over town,
planting birds in strange yards.
It was rough work, weirdly,
staking into the ground, the earth
wobbling with each sluice.
In the ache around midnight,
it started to rain. Grow, birds.
I wanted to bury a bird
in your garden, a glow for you
to know me—but I couldn’t
walk that far. I could never
find you. I could never tell you
with a bird and my mouth
what I wanted. Sometimes I forget
there are a million different
sadnesses. But there is only
one face in the flames.
***
Alison Stine’s first novel Supervision was recently published by HarperVoyager. She’s also the author of two books of poetry: Wait (University of Wisconsin Press, 2011, winner of the Brittingham Prize) and Ohio Violence (University of North Texas Press, 2009, winner of the Vassar Miller). She has work forthcoming in Jezebel and The Awl.
