that so tentative ticked on my roof last night
wouldn’t rouse any but a sleeper on a promise
like a child on Christmas eve — be still, mother says
if there’s a ruckus he’ll pass & there’ll be nothing but coal.

Fool, I could’ve reprised my most cacophonous opera,
fired up the disco ball – all night long – here hard on my window.
The tomatoes concur, crack’d earth fills sweet swells the gourd
& snails from their lair prowl like lions on the savannah.

Out on the plains farmers’ wives are waltzed through mud puddles
by men who eat dust ‘neath bright sunny skies; tho’ further north
searchers curse the rain for the wreck and the fishermen lost;
but here the weatherman’s juju prince for a day. Sure

it won’t last, drought elemental rules all but how pleased
we are by this present, this limpid blowy jewel.

Image: Natalie Tapson, via Flickr, Wide Brown Land sculpture, National Arboretum, Canberra, ACT. Here’s the sainted Dorothea MacKellar and since this about weather, here’s The Weather Station (not that you need an excuse – turn it up children).