Foul-weather Friend
Paul Burgess
Her yard’s become a roiling, muddy creek,
and with the torrent’s shouts inside my ear,
the drowning sounds I barely hear her speak
could be a grocery list or lines from Lear.
As lightning caused the walls of rain to split,
she nudged me toward the door to have a smoke
in weather “made to go outside and sit”.
Before I asked, she slowly sighed then spoke:
“The song of birds has seemed a reprimand,
and cloudless skies have mocked my lack of will.
The stormy days don’t make the same demand
to live as though I were no longer ill.”
So, out we’ve gone to watch the blurry gray
without the sparrows urging, “Seize the day!”
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First published in The Orchards (2025)
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Paul’s notes: “Having spent the first 25 years of my life in the warm and sunny Deep South, I had no idea that moving to a place with cold, gloomy weather between November and early April would bring on annual spells of increasingly severe and debilitating seasonal depression. The experience made me realize that much of what I’d thought of as ‘me’ was really ‘me in warm, sunny weather’.
“While the metaphorical positivity of summer and sunshine has taken on literal meaning for me, another experience has shown me that such positive associations, while common, are not universal. This poem, one of the only poems I have been brave enough to share with the person who inspired it, practically wrote itself once a close friend with a severe mental illness told me about her nearly opposite pattern of dreading any but the stormiest summer days. She explained that sunshine and warmth, which gradually help me recover part of my better self, make her feel like the world is mocking her and putting pressure on her to get out and enjoy the weather. Because she has said that the poem makes her feel more understood, the piece has taken on additional significance for me.”
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Paul Burgess is the sole proprietor of a business in Lexington, Kentucky that offers ESL classes in addition to English, Japanese, and Spanish-language translation and interpretation services. He has recently contributed work to Blue Unicorn, The Road Not Taken, Light, Apricity, Star*Line, The Orchards, Snakeskin, Pulsebeat, and several other publications. Paul’s blog is here and readers are welcome to contact him via this link.
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