Weathered System

Weathered System

Summer finally exhales and space seems to expand,
carrying the heavy weight of the energy of nothingness.
The lake is glossy and calm like it took a Benzodiazepine.
Applying sunscreen, thick as ranch dressing, to expose
their skin to a sun that hides from them in this city most of the year.
People take their time to arrive to the heat, but they always do.
Dropping their towels, stepping out in their flip flops,
it’s the weather that supposes you could do anything.
Boys dream of running their finger down the spines of girls
and girls walk down country roads, where they think country songs
are born, barefoot. People make the things they make of snow
in the sand. We now pay to chill our drinks for the ice
we simply could not stand all winter. The shameless
seagulls cluster and CAW, and time seems to drown in the lake.
Light glances of beer cans left like a wreath around
what remains of someone’s makeshift bonfire pit.

I have to say, your footprints disappear before I can
put down my book. Once I thought I knew how to follow you,
chapter through chapter, season from season.
I look up at the cloudless blue sky, serene. The day
spent in stillness. There will be no rain tonight.
Trees stand like soldiers in formation,
saluting the stars of the cloudless night.

There was not fierce winds, nothing
to bellow or rattle, no walls of rain,
no changing skies. Just days that went on. No threat
of staining time. You listen to my descriptions
of the beach, the birds, the calm, how one chapter,
I could see your footprints and know where you were,
and the next time I put my book down, I had no idea.
I just knew I had lost you.

Something always tracked you.
In that dense heat, I was not even able to track myself.
I was in such of place of stillness, I couldn’t move.
The years of weather, always changing, eroding,
and reconstructing. The constant movement of breezes,
dreams, disasters. The heat had melted the weather systems
that were in my eyes. I realized there was not much left of me.