Climates
Now you are back after three years in London.
I said welcome home as you stepped out of
gate 5 into the heat of a March afternoon,
but you were too uncomfortable to catch
the breeze of my welcome. Instead, you wiped
the beads of perspiration with the back of your hand,
waited impatiently for your luggage,
and complained about the customs and our weather.
Summer apart, which you spent studying,
how I weathered your moans in Chelsea,
of all places, about rain and cold and cold feet,
just so I could persuade you to emerge
to bottle parties to meet my friends. Snail-like
you peered, but met them with trepidation:
Frenchmen, Nigerians, Italians, Indians,
and your pet scare, another Englishman.
“Everything’s so wet in London,” you used
to cry and my God! how I wished you were too.
What’s an attractive girl like you doing
keeping dry in London? Plagued by weather outside
when what bugs you is the weather inside.
Now you are back, with only a degree,
which helps your career, not your life-style.
Saturday evenings chill you like London’s fog.
It clears, permitting you to demand why you
left home, tight-fisted girl, huddled over
your medieval jewel. A touch-me-not
who shrank, not from human touch, but from
a wind that may not blow your way again.
If you believe in prayer, then pray for rain.
Drenching torrents will do. But preferably
a slow, soaking drizzle that seeps through soil’s
dessication, changing the climate for months,
converting boys to men, girls to women,
and you to someone I could really love.
-Robert Yeo (1977)
