If Asked to Predict the Weather
- If Asked to Predict the Weather
I’d say, Sonny,a high of forty-five degrees.
Sixteen, he can’t help shuddering as she slides by, not a whit of surplus flesh flouncing from her sometime thong.
I think of Noah’s flood, of the song sung when the waters parted for the Israelites, of scythes, and a scattering of sheaves.
His body has betrayed him and he dares not turn sideways, for he knows his mother has observed. [End Page 166]
Down by the float, she removes her one-piece, whips it round her finger in some maddening gyre.
The snout between his legs rises, as if to spring through his hips, sniff a rib, emerge back of the jaw—
that ancient crunch of leaves, the chuckle of water as the men dive in. [End Page 167]
Diane Reid lives near Fredericton, where she reviews for the Canada East dailies and collects memorabilia for Alden Nowlan House. First broadcast on cbc Radio One, her poetry has appeared in Arc, Atlantis, The Common Sky: Canadian Writers Against the War, The Fiddlehead, Grain, The Malahat Review, Our Times, and Qwerty.
