CHRIST, THE WEATHER

In North Dakota, ruled by democracies

of level, even winter is Christian.

The gray, patient, suffering skies

amuse themselves with promises to shun

that harlot summer’s blue-constructed lies.

Late April.  Thirty-one degrees.  But shameless

spectacles of sun, and wind gone quiet.

This latter coalition makes a momentary mess

of guilt, but it, composed again, resumes a diet

gray with sleet, ashamed for wanting more, not less.

We don’t deserve a summer’s hope, its light.

The bliss of yes is jacketed, coated, capped,

its green desires mostly out of sight.

So if your parka’d shoulder’s ever tapped

by grinning fools of happy weather, fight

the limping beauty of their whistled tune;

don’t listen when they say it’s been but seven

months.  I promise summer, the lame balloon-

man shouts, and it will be heaven—

but not here, not now, not even very soon.

John Early teaches in the MFA Creative Writing Program at Minnesota State University Moorhead.  His poetry and fiction have appeared in a number of journals, and his novel Flesh and Metal was published by Carroll & Graf.