~ Delta Poetry Review ~

Diane Elayne Dees

Weather Report

High winds are coming.

I feel a light breeze,

yet I can hear the wind

approaching from far off.

The birds are loud,

except for one cardinal

who hides inside a shrub

outside my bay window

and looks at me through the glass,

as if to ask “what is happening?”

That same shrub has sheltered

an entire cardinal family,

a garter snake, multiple lizards,

and seasons of dragonflies.

It never used to be like this.

There was the annual anxiety

about hurricanes, and—

on rare occasions—we were hit;

a tornado struck even less often.

Now I prepare to spend time

in my bedroom closet with a phone,

a lantern, and a weather radio

on any given day.

The winds are picking up,

Mardi Gras parades are

canceled or rolling early,

the cardinal’s mate has found

the shelter of the bay window shrub

and I stand in the shelter of my house,

wondering when the power will go out,

which limbs will fall, whether a tornado

will form. This is the new normal,

a swirling force of weather anxiety

every month of the year.

It never used to be like this.

Diane Elayne Dees is the author of the chapbooks Coronary Truth (Kelsay Books), The Last Time I Saw You (Finishing Line Press), The Wild Parrots of Marigny (Querencia Press), and I Can’t Recall Exactly When I Died. (Kelsay Books). Diane, who lives in Covington, Louisiana, also publishes Women Who Serve, a blog that delivers news and commentary on women’s professional tennis throughout the world. Her author blog is Diane Elayne Dees: Poet and Writer-at-Large.