weather talk (part II)

Weather-Weather Lang ‘Yan

Perhaps there exists some truth
to this adage they call
a phrase too commonplace:
rushing into conclusion,
a communion of mouths
and words all muttered in haste.
Yet it’s a fact we must face –

in ephemeral silence; dismissed
like the drunkard who loiters
in wait for the second round
of swigs, eyes swollen and red.
(They say he’s here now and then –
perhaps today, perhaps tonight)
toasting beer glasses. Does this

remind you then, once, of things
that got away? When what spilled out
of our senses was nothing else
but a phrase – tearing down walls of
expectation. That was your share
of consolation. We know we’ve
had enough of the proverbial Erap joke

growing trite with each encounter,
much like fate impinging on fortune
that was almost ours. So perhaps now
we understand why there’s scarcely
cause for punctuation, a dilution of our
foibles rolled into whispers

of peripheral contention - lest we succumb
once again to fondness, reminiscence,
whichever. Or should memory cough up
figments of our erstwhile consternation
hardly salved by what they tell us: a phrase
we half-believed was meant for smooth
transitions, strokes of simple reason

we’ll try to comprehend in time. For now
it is a question we will dodge, clueless,
another time, another try. As we make
sense of things falling into place,
we think: They could be anything.
No use insisting on something, an intention
not even so much as a silhouette

suggesting symptoms of
return. Or perhaps imparting
cycles, breeding weathers from a phrase
that has never found completion.