Lesbia Harford: Verses about Weather

I'd love to have you on a rainy day
Tucked in a chair, my head against your knee
To sit and dream with. Sometime you must be
My home-sharer whom rain can't keep away.

'Raging winter wind
Let loose in springtime
What is the message your cold touch brings?'
Spite of days and dreams,
Warm and easy and sublime,
Terror crouches always at the heart of things.

He has a fairy wife.
He does not know her.
She is the heart of the storm,
Of the clouds that lower.
And as the clouds are torn
Into rain and thunder,
She in her brightness tears
His heart asunder.

Tall trees along the road,
I never saw you
Last year in summertime.
He came before you
With his blue eyes.
Warm wind along the road,
I never knew you
Last year in summertime.
We could outdo you
With our hot sighs.
This year, oh wind and trees,
We're friends together.
Else should I be alone
In this sweet weather
Beneath fair skies.

A bunch of lilac and a storm of hail
On the same afternoon! Indeed I know
Here in the South it always happens so,
That lilac is companioned by the gale.
I took some hailstones from the window sill
And swallowed them in a communion feast.
Their transitory joy is mine at least,
The lilac's loveliness escapes me still.
Mine are the storms of spring, but not the sweets.

Today
I'd like to be a nun
And go and say
My rosary beneath the trees out there.
In this shy sun
The raindrops look like silver beads of prayer.
So blest
Am I, I'd like to tell
God and the rest
Of heaven-dwellers in the garden there
All that befell
Last week. Such gossip is as good as prayer.
Ah well!
I have, since I'm no nun,
No beads to tell,
And being happy must be all my prayer.
Yet 'twould be fun
To walk with God 'neath the wet trees out there.