Crazy weather. Look out
over the bay after the daylong storm
that should have cleared the air
but didn’t. The haze so dense

if I was not seated, solid in this chair, I could believe
the way upward and the way downward
are the same. Perhaps I believe that
anyway. I write

here in lantern light, well past midnight,
while the waves that wander in to shore
hardly offer reprieve from the stillness
of this evening. Not a single simple breeze

to disturb the fog,
almost a porcelain feel to it,
pale, brittle;
like it might craze, or crack

open, shatter like that plate that hit the wall.
You might recall that night. The storming
off. We are altogether too much
weather.

-Cynthia Neely