Weatherman
Leaves of cloud
cast against
a porcelain sky.
Haloes ‘round
the angel moon.
You took stock:
sun, wind, vapour,
the weight of air;
earth spinning on
its axis
beneath your rooted feet.
More than Abraham’s,
you were Aristotle’s scion:
your prophesies —
patterns perceived
in all that’s connected,
in perpetual flux.
*
Eight years to the day
(Eight years! Can it be?),
I mark the day you left:
thirteen below; the wind, northwest;
over Toronto towers,
your boyhood’s arctic blue prairie sky.
In the cemetery:
your impossible grave dug in
frozen ground,
solid as the shield,
beneath.
*
This cold January eve,
my palm grows warm
above a candle’s small flame.
