Dear Millennium, on Weather Alerts as Doxology
       

Praise God for the cool sea fog wafting
in swatches over my face,
presaging a rain squall, the slashing bands
of cloudy water moving over a sea.
I boiled a pot of rice in severe weather,
forgot to close my window,
so the rain pooled on the floor.
My own rain factory, I laughed —
to manufacture weather like a shop,
let it inhabit my domestic spaces —
a friendly cloud who follows children.
The clouds warn us of the second coming,
clouds beckon us to prayer. Come in,
come in. Enter into the holiest
of holies, into the glory cloud.
Yesterday, creeks and canyons flooded —
cross winds pushed water over the peninsula,
dangerous surf at high tide. If you recall
the dry months last year, when honeysuckle
curled back in the heat, and a non-fruiting
olive tree touched the sand with its thirst,
this rainfall is a blessing —
even worms peep from their earth-holes
to inspect the armored locusts,
and the heavenly host rolls in its bed,
the softest velvet field of clover,
starry buds tuned to the sky's swollen moods
before a battery of storm alerts,
small prophets of eschatological climate change.
Let us praise God for what we know
only in this realm, the uncertainty of weather,
neither conquered nor contained.

Tweet
Copyright © 2020 Karen An-hwei Lee All rights reserved
from Poetry Northwest
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission