From Weather Inventions

A broke-down cart for the field
          to contain, a leave-it-be-ness,

                    a “gone back to nature” kind of song.

I’ll be all goose-
          feather-plucked if experience is

                    not this, but this

in sounding.  Slosh-work
          of rain: oxidation honeycombs

                    the surface. Strangeness in

moderation. Yes, please,
          strangeness in some form. Overhead,

                    cloud interval, widening gap:

an abundance (not unless
          you’re in the thick of it).

                    I’m for the Tradition of Wonder.

“Extraordinary facts
          teach us nothing.”

                    ~

I’m sorry to report     
pass

ropelike, conditions    
amazingly throughout

fit for/of     
microburst,

scud cloud     
incorrectly filler

flanking line of     
swell

completion
(standard moves, reflections)

squall turned gust turned mesocyclonic

a link    
willing

                    ~

Condition Notes (2)

Open air, morning.

Lungfuls, gulps and the cold

precise meaning of nothing new.

I’ll be a pick to the string, a stake

to the pole. The leaves metallic

under the sun. A stripped-downness

that looks horrible, looks inadequate.

All resin earth-dry, slowed and kept

ambered in the vein. Clotted’s

not the word—stilted.

The going-ons elsewhere.  

                    ~

Dear Little Stormcloud,

An onward push, that’s the message I’m to send. The diamondback have their outcrop three days from you and you’re to wind along the riverbluffs with an eye east. There’ll be redstone and terror. Trees with scabby-white bark. Groundfox burrow near the rooted out fell. I’m not one to powder my words, so know this: the plains take on innocence, that’s their way of having you. Sun’s got wide arc, an expanse beyond thought. The grass-flats have been known to swirl, to switch names, and even there all animals look the same.  I’ll make my report, keep you on the books. You’re for the rough, know this. I give you up. You make do.
 
Yours—without the bitterly ushering—
Broken Feather 

Emily Rosko is the author of Raw Goods Inventory (U. Iowa Press, 2006). Poems are currently in The Denver Quarterly, The Laurel Review, and Shenandoah, and are forthcoming in CutBank and Pleiades.