Obviously, my sister did not see this poem before she died but I think she would have liked it.
WEATHER REPORT
My sister called them the weather terrorists
She’d rail at how
They’d whip us into a frenzy
make us hide in a cellar
Stay at home
Peek out windows in fear
And pffffft
One flake
One drop
Not even a good blow.
Drove her nuts
It was the last thing she said to me
As I made my way from a gully washer in Texas
To a thunder bumper in Ohio
Don’t listen to those damn weather terrorists, she said.
You know what their problems is?
They get the ass end of the eight-minute news spot.
All they have is a map, a pointer stick and sweeping gestures.
So they make the weather sound worse that it is.
Attention getting nitwits.
She watched a lot of weather rush by her bedroom window
While the storm of cancer circled her uterus
And marched up the inferior vena cava like a slow-moving front
Eventually she had a stroke
The barometer in her brain
Couldn’t regulate the flood of chemo
or the high tide of cancer cells.
When I kissed her say goodbye
She couldn’t speak
There was only a tear
One tear
Rolling down her face.
©Lindsey Lane

Libby 1946-2011