“Colliding Fronts”
A Shel Silverstein poem came to
life
where the rain ended on the
sidewalk,
the visibly invisible demarcation line
between sun
and storm dividing the wet from the
dry distinctly across the
cracked, black asphalt: waters running
left,
dry land remaining right, like the
second day of Creation.
Roiling clouds smashed into the
invisible wall—
a stark division between gray and
blue— and passed through
an unseen sieve and started to
dissipate,
sun-streaked cotton unraveling as
it spun farther east,
leaving the lot, the ballpark
beyond soaking on the left,
the right keeping the bright light
from the attic to itself.
The forecaster’s neatly patterned weather
lines leaped
from the green screen of Channel
Two and established boundaries
in the parking lot—a backdrop to the shifting, changing weather
patterns
manifest in a lone ninth grade girl
trudging the hallway,
her swirl of inner storm partitioned
off from the blue skies and carefree
clouds she so badly wanted the
world to see.
