"Blue Variables/Weather"

By Judy Staber

What quality? What mercy?
That rain was never gentle,
it was soaking, drenching, saturating,
like all the angels weeping.

And the thunderstorms,
when they came,
were under heavy pressure,
with lightning in blinding sheets or forked
like the tongue of God.

A partial eclipse of the soul
began at three and continued,
with low fronts and rare shafts of sunlight,
for years. Where were you, mother?

Drop a heavy mist over the past.
Shroud fog around memories that disturb.
For how many inches of partly cloudy
can cover the loss of a firstborn?
Of family-life once cherished?
And all that potential love?

The forecast? Unpredictable.
Partly sunny every day
with occasional low-hanging clouds
and luminous blue variables.

Writer Judy Staber lives in Columbia County, New York. Born into a theatrical family, she grew up at The Actors' Orphanage in England. She has written a memoir about her childhood and is currently working on a biography of her mother and father and their lives in the theater in England and America.