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Cirrus Never Whispers

Alex Saynor

Tuesday, April 9th, 2024

1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 ‘Be quiet; the weather’s on the night news.’
Stephen Malkmus, Watery, Domestic

2 Leave a comment on verse 2 0 Cirrus never whispers, or was that Texas?
What you really meant was cumulonimbus
with deep grey future rain around its base.

3 Leave a comment on verse 3 0 How it was heaving, piled up like a mountain range,
future stories blurred in heaviness
through the onrush of torrential rain.

4 Leave a comment on verse 4 0 Mystic currents or predictable science,
how suddenly the air cools and leaves pick up
through whistle-punctuated silence.

5 Leave a comment on verse 5 0 Now air, spinning round a shifted vortex
leads its life outside the barricades
which needed to be pre-prepared.

6 Leave a comment on verse 6 0 The fog of rain left hope unleavened
and in the fog we said our prayers
to whomsoever conducts from silence

7 Leave a comment on verse 7 0 this aberration among beige apartments
conditioned for sun. Then the rain
in intermittent tranches rinsed mud

8 Leave a comment on verse 8 0 down gulleys, goals lifted in the wind,
their metal frames travelling, stones
assailed our faces as yours dug in

9 Leave a comment on verse 9 0 with teeth through heavy clothing
to somehow survive this wind
and rain and hail of everything.

Notes

The football reference in this poem is that in the autumn 2014 I took my son out for a game when away with family and we found ourselves in the epicentre of one of the strongest storms for years (confirmed when a weather forecaster in our family produced a chart from work which showed the strongest winds concentrated where we were.) An eleven-a-side metal framed goal literally took off and travelled through the air. A walk of about 500 metres back to our apartment took over an hour as we tried to dodge stones and other detritus before sheltering in the doorway of an office building before making a dash for home.

Source: http://footballpoets.org/poems/cirrus-never-whispers/