Emily Rosko

Weather Inventions

Turbulent presence,
(who has seen?)

the wind's mosaics: triangular
crests, cat's-paws, the marbled

look of approach. Beneath
the sand, black rock

pocked, brittle as any
roughly handled thing. Weather-

worsted sea-bank, purple jellies
strewn petal-like. Capillary to white-

cap: spillover from a gale's
fetch. The water throws
diamonds neither you nor I
can count. A passing note,

when exhale becomes exalt
(it whirleth about continually).

The shallows drawn aside:
a fluke, a dividing of

the Gulf of Suez. Disobedient
form, "to imagine is to see."



Weather Inventions

A nest twined in her head: a looted

space. Blued sky, reduced
equation. No thought clouds

more than nerves in downpour,

the brain on track repeat, little else
in. She wouldn't recognize

her own. Bad line, bad

way to smooth over. Dutifully
yours, she'd say (private

little song), I'm just having a bad day.

With the whole trouble
poured into her glass.

Ruinous. In the stomach.



Weather Inventions

Trade routes:
Night, the troposphere traversed
by insects and spiders on a silk

line. Wind-prone
specks: relinquished, wingless.
Our passage is
not the quickest, not end to
end, but wayward. Fish-scales of

cloud, the cloudfront, engendering
breeze, shift, the slip past.


Weather Inventions

I take her to mean the lows
drive her. Mudfield: a determined abuse.
           Grey descending

fingerling of cloud. Scattershot
the skies, drippy and laundry-line hung.
            The valley looks good enough

to flood. Landbreak, acres gone
marsh. Sitting duck.
           The crick up an inch an hour.

I take her to mean water's
its own torture, following course
           as it does to ocean

level, all rush and no minding.
A low-landedness in her says hide,
           find shelter. So be feather-coated,

be blue-winged, turn gloss to glide.
I mean plant yourself high. Plot
           hillside, plot crest and thaw.



Notes:

Weather Inventions [Turbulent presence]: Christina Rossetti, "Who Has Seen the Wind?"; "The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits," (Hebrew Bible, Ecclesiastes 1:6); Andre Breton, "to imagine is to see," included in Barbara Guest's Forces of Imagination.

about Emily Rosko