If dark clouds in the west suggest a storm
and one weather person says it will be a doozy
while another says it will pass just to your north
and has squiggly lines on a map to prove it,
and both broadcast from the same station,
who should you trust? Or is this mere showbiz,
a spectacle of disagreement among experts?
The woman weather person says, Even if he’s
right, she’d prefer a collision of fronts to a word
like doozy, but smiles when she says it.
They both work for people who know weather
has become a business, thus her cleavage,
and his bowtie and casual mention of a doctorate.
Today, though, they agree it’s serious business
if you live in Oklahoma City (you don’t), or know
someone in the vicinity (you do), or if you live
elsewhere and have (this they don’t say)
an imagination and a heart that can be broken,
or, more terrible, one that can’t.
Their network knows we all have worries
beyond the vagaries of weather; its ads suggest
ways to lessen anxiety, and they recommend pills
that brighten your outlook if their side effects
don’t kill you. And there you are in your living room
with the bemused worry of a groom whose bride
may actually show up this time.
The weather people are correct
in assuming you watch them for reasons
beyond discovering how to dress for the day
or if it’s necessary to carry an umbrella.
The people you love, the few you can’t bear,
are understandably not their concerns,
as they are sometimes not yours,
though today you’re wishing one of the experts
would address the hidden relationship between
catastrophe and entertainment, and why there’s
so much smiling. Now the weatherwoman points
with her pointer to a town not far away
from your town, a town that’s in the path
(the psychopath she calls it—risking a weather joke)
of that funnel-shaped disturbance that will dip
randomly, she says, and have no respect
for churches or cattle or anything in its way.
Their producer must be pleased with how a tinge
of regret in her voice gels with her visible excitement.
You’ve always been the kind of man who wished
to be known for the quality of his yearnings,
regardless of outcome, but now you want
the storm that won’t stop to stop, just stop,
and your friend who lives there in Johnsville
with his two bulldogs, Butch and Bella, you want
for all of them to be spared. You feel like
the Holden Caulfield of the Midwest.
Meanwhile, the sky has darkened to another shade
of black, and the wind, it … the weatherman says
it’s time to make a statement. No, says
the weatherwoman, it’s time for prophecy,
but he puts his hand over her mouth. These are
the asides they’ve learned that boost ratings,
some are even scripted, but statement or prophecy,
whatever it is this time, you see Johnsville
suddenly being tossed about, cars and houses
like out of control low-flying aircraft,
and your TV flutters, becomes snowy;
everything disappears from your screen.
It’s a doozy for sure, though semantics
and right and wrong no longer seem to matter.
And now it’s coming your way.
You retreat to the southwest corner of your cellar
with its little nest of candy bars and blankets.
The weather people, if you could hear them,
would be saying that’s where to go,
and if the house comes off its foundation,
blows over your head, you’ll live another day.
Your phone is ringing. Your phone still rings!
as something like the end of the world descends,
then manages to veer away, and you’re alive,
your neighborhood still your neighborhood.
You wander outside with others risen
from their cellars, hugging in stupefied silence
everyone you pass, the only sound
the whirr of a copter overhead,
recording the scene for a future broadcast.