Issue 30: Stuart Pickford

Weather Girl

Flat water, the Ouse wasn’t a river.

It barely moved, leaked its heavy name.

On the far bank, she watched hares, boxing.

Sometimes one screamed like a child.

She couldn’t escape due to the ditches.

Standing by the Forty-Foot Drain, she stared

at the bulk of the sky weighing down,

wrapping over the meres and wetlands.

As a kid, she dressed up to be a weather girl,

her all-time dream: chipper, slit shirt,

sweeping her hand over the Dales; winking,

If you’re straying far, take an umbrella.

Grown up, she refused to swivel about

to flutter her eyes at the gaze of men,

hair drooling down one naked shoulder,

her voice rising for the high pressure.

She pored over maps of Tornado Alley,

emigrated to the High Plains of Nebraska,

welded a roll bar and skirt on her pickup,

spat on her hands, waited for the twisters.

Now, satellite displays on the dash, she chases

dust devils, stovepipes, the whooshing roar

of the finger of God; she stalks hurricanes,

the spinning squall around that terrible eye.

If she makes it to the clear, calm centre,

she stops, leans on the bonnet, breathes,

perhaps recalls the warmth of a hare’s form,

sees leverets, born with their eyes open.

Loop

Stonefall Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery

The first time? The evening I spooked

a barn owl—light on dark. Instead

of running home, I looped around,

opened the gate. The writing swam

before my eyes as I read your ages—

all about twenty. Next time, a mum

pushing a buggy, singing to her child.

Something made me take the turn.

The miles shrank to nothing. Standing

before you, I let the quietness in.

On the road, I imagine your streets

in St John, Toronto, Palmerston, Macklin,

telegraph poles drawing out the distance,

square shopfronts and you, Paul, strolling

from the factory into afternoon sun.

Here, the traffic’s backed up, madness;

then in a few paces—rows of alders,

my footprints in the damp grass.

Portland limestone lends order

to that night, two of you jumping

before impact. Sometimes this place

shows the life spared for me as I see you,

Joe, on your parents’ farm in Manitoba:

the prairies run to the horizon; you bend

and rub the corn between your fingers.

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