The Critics Threaten Rain

I was poised (thoughts hovering cloudlike)

to write a poem about the weather

 

until the post appeared (iciest of wind-

tendrils) warning that weather poems

 

were cliché, the word cliché clinging and

chill (a fog deep in the bones).

 

I looked again at my days, meandering

forward and back (arid, but) still

 

with enough turbid water to carve deeper,

and wondered how much I needed

 

to respect the dampening opinion of

critics (that persistent zone

 

of low pressure) trusting, instead, my own

(zephyr-like) inspiration and

 

the time-nulling (balmy) satisfaction

of following it home.

 

 

 

Devon Balwit is a teacher/poet from Portland, Oregon. She has two chapbooks: how the blessed travel (Maverick Duck Press) and Forms Most Marvelous (forthcoming with dancing girl press). Her work has found many homes, some of which are: The Cincinnati Review, The Stillwater Review, Sierra Nevada Review, Red Earth Review, Timberline Review, Poets Reading the News, The NewVerse News, The Ekphrastic Review.