The Poetry of Bad Weather

Someone had propped a skateboard by the door of the classroom, to make quick his escape, come the bell. For it was February in Florida, the air of instruction thick with tanning butter. Why, my students wondered, did the great dead poets all live north of us? Was there nothing to do all winter there but pine for better weather? Had we a window, the class could keep an eye on the clock and yet watch the wild plum nod with the absent grace of the young. We could study the showy scatter of petals. We could, for want of a better word, call it “snowy.” The room filled with stillness, flake by flake. Only the dull roar of air forced to spend its life indoors could be heard. Not even the songbird of a cell phone chirped. Go home, I wanted to tell the horse on the page. You know the way, even in snow gone blue with cold.

—Debora Greger