A Weather Report

Forty-six days of fall
drought in Seattle
that's the most but one:

it started when we planned
to have a baby next July—
the first came by surprise.

That's why in October I'm
out watering wilted daisies and
petunias when by now they

should be finished and the mud
starts climbing our front steps.
My students don't believe in gods,

and when they say Athena
is Akhilleus's conscience I don't
nod smugly back, because how else

could rain so long delay?

On Cherry-Pitting

Once a year—not more—I make a pie
with cherries, usually ones some friends
have brought from their overflowing supply.
I expose the fruit in adoration,

each a perfect round bud unto
itself—together a garden before efflorescence.
Then the pushing and pulling begin. You
have to brace yourself against the mess

of juice, exploding on your hands and clothes,
against the mass of broken fragments in your bowl,
red and yellow—tangled, torn, bruised,
and against the endless repetition of a small

motion: to take, to tug, remove the stem
then drop, pull, poke, drop, pit again.