On Weather

1998 It looked hot out, Mom wrote. She’d been in the hospital for a week and a half already, all there had been to do was look out of the…

Our eight-year old had the flu last week, when it snowed almost two inches, which was almost enough for our snow removal service to kick in. I’d insisted to you…

1. “I don’t know if things happen for a reason,” my dad says in a low aside to my boyfriend in the pizza parlor in Grand Forks, North Dakota. “I…

Arslanbob The climb had been sunny and cheerful, but by the time they reached the base of the waterfall, the sky was thick with low clouds snagging like cotton batting…

I step onto the porch and look for the rain. The sun won’t return until tomorrow, I know. But I need it. I crave rules. Facts. Certainty. Rely on the…

I step onto the porch and look for the rain. The sun won’t return until tomorrow, I know. But I need it. I crave rules. Facts. Certainty. Rely on the…

I’m sitting at the edge of the garage with my grandpa. We’re in lawn chairs, the ugly pastel woven kind that leave checkerboard welts on the backs of my thighs,…

The little girl who tromps down to the creek, after the season’s first rain, spring rain that comes after the crocuses, after the thaw, she wears black rubber boots trimmed…

–After the Eastern Tornado Outbreak on June 2, 1998   Trapped, in our Sunday best, in standstill traffic; as rain raised the river to tickle the road beneath our tires;…

Deep in the dead of winter, not long after the Solstice, we wake to the illusion of summer, to the brightest daylight of the year. Perihelion. Those few short hours…

Before The rumbling went on for months–earth-shaking, steam-venting. Everyone on edge. The volcanologist on the mountain and the mother of a teenager who had crossed the line from adolescent angst…

Of Angela Each morning Angela awoke and looked out at the sky. Then she rose and tapped her bedside table exactly twenty-four times with her forefinger, then put her small…

Worry   Without cloud cover to hold it at bay, the cold pours over the eaves of the house and mounds up against the foundation like sand in an hourglass.…

How To Imitate The Wind Become invisible. Create electricity, grind grain into flour. Merge air masses, turn them into swirling storms. Drop a house on a witch’s sister. Carry smoke…