A History of Weather BIlly Collins

A History of Weather

It is the kind of spring morning -candid sunlight
elucidating the air, a flower-ruffling breeze-
that makes me want to begin a history of weather,
a ten-volume elegy for the atmospheres of the past,
the envelopes that have moved around the moving globe.

It will open by examining the cirrus clouds
that are now sweeping over this house into the next state,
and every chapter will step backwards in time
to illustrate the rain that fell on battlefields
and the winds that attended beheadings, coronations.

The snow flurries of Victorian London will be surveyed
along with the gales that blew off Renaissance caps.
The tornadoes of the middle Ages will be explicated
and the long, overcast days of the Dark Ages.
There will be a section on the frozen nights of antiquity
and on the heat shimmered in the deserts of the Bible.

The study will be hailed as ambitious and definitive,
for it will cover even the climate before the Flood
when showers moistened Eden and will conclude
with the mysteries of the weather before history
when unseen clouds drifted over an unpeopled world,
when not a soul lay in any of earth's open meadows gazing up
at the passing of enormous faces and animal shapes,
his jacket bunched into a pillow, an open book on his chest.


After reading the title and first stanza where do you think we are going?
I don't think we are going anywhere, I think we are staying right here in the "candid sunlight" feeling the "flower ruffling breeze". Actually its the nicest day we have had in a while.

As the poem progresses are we taken anywhere else?
It turns out i was wrong. I thought we were enjoying the drifting "cirrus clouds that are now sweeping over this house", they're my favourite kind of clouds! But apparently we're going back in time, through the 'The History of Weather' . Honestly, I have not a clue what to expect!

Do we need special clothes? What kind?
To be honest I don't know what I should have brought with me but I have carried all I could manage. But now that we have been greeted by the "rain" and the "winds that attended beheadings, coronations" and the "snow flurries of  Victorian London" I wish I had dressed more appropriately in the presence of such prestigious weather.

Are you scared?
Well, now that there are "tornadoes" hurtling towards me, yes I am quite afraid! We're on our way to the Dark Ages so I shut my eyes in fear! The mere thought my raincoat will not protect me is frightening.


Do you  anywhere specific that you have heard of ?
When I open my eyes I see the most beautiful place on earth. "showers moistened Eden" and I sat in the light rain this concluded the journey. It's the end of time! I feel the need to locate the 'Forbidden Fruit' or dance in the rain.

So what now?How do you feel?
That's a good question. Now I am one of the first to witness the "unseen clouds" of an  "unpeopled world". It's so quiet. I feel almost whimsical, I feel a sense of relaxation that I have never experienced. Its so quiet that I can hear my thoughts. I lie and stare at the "passing of enormous faces and animal shapes".