The Promise We Live By

On the West Coast, days of rainstorm wrestle

the Coast Range, their wet fury driven landward.

We never quite known what the sky promises,

and there is certain assurance in that fate.

It is for that we wait. We’ve already weathered

more than promises. They’ve passed us by.

So I’m not sure this morning when I step outside,

and suddenly it’s not winter anymore but some

warm mask that molds the contours of my face

with unbidden warmth. It’s almost unnatural

but I hope not, having already found reliable

the promise of loss. My expectation is unfulfilled.

Somewhere within the universe of the prairie hills

is a climate that is yet unnoticed, and from it

is welling a warm rupture of another sure season.

Believe it is not unusual, I urge myself

whose myths are always changing in the light.

So it’s this we arrive into daily, always

another season, warm or frigid, and it’s we

who wage weather within our furious spirits.

Tomorrow’s dawn is a promise that will fulfill.

Never mind if the sky does not quite agree.