"Fear of Weather"

Once a favorite conversation piece,

now something more like a disease.

A weathervane sings, a wind chime clangs.

It’s December, only a slight silver breeze,

but already I’m imagining the tangled

metal of cars, birds falling from the trees.

My therapist says fear is normal,

that it’s simply a matter of degrees,

the brain has an internal mechanism,

she says, a switch that flicks on and off with ease.

I imagine a kind of silver machine

in my brain, humming like a hive of bees,

fear hopping from synapse to synapse

like some sort of electric, Post-modern flea.

Each day I swallow my grief like a pill,

ignore my therapist’s advice, my wife’s pleas.

I wait for the sky to fall, longing for the days

when wind was only wind, trees only trees.