Weather comes for us east and west this time of year.
I watch it unfold, prepare best I can
Mostly I just watch millibars and strings and
eyewalls that have not evolved or think they wanna be
but never quite get there
coming to our shores as a tropical storm,
no harm intended but beware, she’s water
she’s nature, she cares nothing about you
and half the time I believe she wants to do us in,
and then this, an orange dusky rainbow in the backyard
proof we were passed over, patting ourselves on the backs
with that great camera phone pic that got twelve-hundred likes on Twitter
But only three of us watched the whole thing unfold
naked, no umbrellas, daring, me concerned but not flat-out afeard,
standing barefoot in lukewarm puddles in the dips of the decking
how lucky we are to be wet mongrels in the world of this day.

A supposed tropical storm came around this way and it was
more like a car wash, normal for this spit of land,
maybe a little more wind and less rain and a weak bough broke in the backyard.
You know, the backyard where the lady built a wall to keep the world out
with clotheslines and moldy towels, a half-assed wall of trellis
covered in black cloth.
We had a bit of wind and water, not much else to speak of and
there he is in my window frame,
my personal dragonfly doing a handstand on a twig, butt pointing to the sky
because a bough broke during the night.
I named him George, George of the handstand, George of the pommel horse
letting his wings dry in the dawning hot sun day
Then he’s gone for days, my personal dragonfly
Eaten or bored
But here he is again, a biplane resting before takeoff for who knows where
His big, big brothers fly west, and I notice there are fewer of them this year
Where are the westerly-flying dragonflies who get a little lost in this
surfrider canyon of yellow walls and sea-foam green doors?
George returns to the twig that looks like a slingshot,
gossamer spiderweb line, one line, awaits but he’s too clever for that
as they are still or pushed violently in the breeze.

George is elsewhere this morning and I have no hope this way or other
to see him again, but I will never forget his biplane glassine wings,
his showoffy handstands, amazement he returns to that same slingshot-shaped
set of branches that came because a wind broke a branch
and nobody but me gets to see you.