04/12/2026
Reading The Weather
I knew a man who read the land like scripture—
the turn of crows, the lean of ash in rain,
the way a frost would settle in a hollow
before it climbed the hill. He never said
what lay beyond, but felt it in the weather.
And I have felt it too, at times—
walking late, the road a ribbon underfoot,
the hedges closing in with their own talk,
a fox slipping across the margin of sight,
the whole night listening to itself.
It is not distance then but nearness grows—
the sense of something pressing close and clear,
like earth when spade first breaks it, rich and damp,
the smell of life that waits beneath the skin
of what we think is finished, closed, or known.
We carry it, that depth, without a name.
In breath drawn slow, in pauses held too long,
in every glance that lifts beyond the field
and lingers where the known begins to thin,
we edge toward what cannot be contained.
And maybe there is no beyond at all,
no farther shore, no last, outlying light—
only this dark that folds and folds again,
holding the stars the way the ground holds seed,
each one a spark not lost but waiting still.
So I stand here, between the hedge and sky,
feeling the night come up through earth and air,
and know that what lies out beyond my sight
is not a place I’ll reach by looking hard—
but something I have always stood within.
