Cathleen Calbert

When the weather doesn’t match
what you want to do—

say, sip hot chocolate
because you feel like it, okay, because
it’s the end of the day and you need
some comfort food for a change,
you’re in the mood for thick sweaters,
the clean beginnings of fall or the inside of winter,
but it’s blooming like bloody mad outside,
it’s sunny as all get out, full
of crocuses, daffodils, whippoorwills,
and you’re just one lone pale freak,

or you’re set for sun, tough to imagine,
but it could be picnic, could be basking,
maybe something sexy, maybe
smearing cocoa butter over your body
and someone else’s, then slipping
cherrystones and littlenecks
into each other’s mouths
on a terracotta terrace
in your best halter dress
that just doesn’t work with a wrap,
when a scolding rain forces you
inside a cold car, where the only possibility
is a furious exchange of words
or tongues,

or you’ve finally gone sublime
inside your body and are ready
to shout something crazy—
Melancholy’s Sweet, Truth’s Beauty—
but the mountains are smaller than in pictures,
not ice-tipped monuments of grandeur,
not Mont Blanc, not even little Yawgoo—

it’s a drag then, isn’t it?
It’s as if Nature doesn’t give a shit
about what you want, as if
you don’t even matter.


first published in The Cimarron Review