"The End of It" and "Meteorologist"

The End of It

we stand holding onto one another
watching as lightning slashes the sky
jumping a little with each new explosion of thunder
 
rain dims the dawn
and the wind scatters what’s left of this
like worn and tattered clothing
 
of course we knew it would end
wasn’t that part of the allure? 
 
over and over my father’s rainy-day mantra
      ~rain before 7 stops before 11~
runs on a loop in my head
 
at eleven I will put you on a train away from here
one last time
 
how civilized, how mature we are
I am not sad
never mind that the scar inside my chest has grown yet another layer

Meteorologist

                        (for Vyacheslav Korotki)
 
as if he was the wind or the weather
he doesn’t get lonely at all
this specialist in the polar north
measuring temperatures  
the winds
     tundra and snowstorms
a part of him now
 
the world of cities    people
foreign    uninteresting
he is content
   his maps pinned to peeling walls
a clock that still works     supplies delivered once a year
 
in the light of a lamp he enters
                                                  numbers in a journal

 
on a table -- a pre-war radio   its transmissions
     often interrupted    
 
but the northern lights’
unearthly golds and greens sheen the sky
and the moon shining on the hard-packed snow
etches terrible beauty into his eyes

This poem is based on a photo essay that appeared in The New Yorker, December 2014