Forecast

Forecast

I want to tell you about the sky--

how it is gray again

like yesterday and the day before

heavy and damp

releasing only sporadic raindrops

as if holding back a flood of unshed tears

but also how the breeze is slightly warm

not bone-biting cold like before

carrying a whiff of freshness

and how the blanket of gray

unravels near the horizon

revealing a ribbon of blue

suggesting the possibility of sunshine

the return, perhaps, of joy.

by Sarah Fairchild 2000

~ ~ ~

Notes:

→ I categorize this as "astronomy poetry" because, for amateur astronomers, observing the stars is not only about studying stars; much of it is a matter of sky-gazing, and much of that is about clouds! Not just because they can obscure the view of the stars but because the weather in all its aspects is fascinating in and of itself. You cannot help but become attentive to your feelings about the clouds and the weather in the process.

There is a fine line between star-gazing and sky-gazing, and for that matter, night watching. Astronomers, professional and amateur alike, often write about their feelings concerning nature and the night world in which they spend much of their productive, creative time.

Sarah was the wife of an astronomer, and I am certain that as a result, she was a bit more sensitive to the influence of the sky on her feelings than she otherwise would have been.

→ It might also matter that at this time, something very oppressive came between me and the starry sky -- something in the social situation at the observatory  --  which certainly affected the family. I became, once again, very depressed and even a bit self-destructive. My astronomy activities all but ceased. ARiN collapsed, as did my volunteering activities at Hyde.adding, I am sure, some degree of oppressiveness to the atmosphere within the family milieu. It was, to be sure, a bad winter.

→ Yet Sarah was also coming out of a rather oppressive decade full of death and oppressive forces, so this might have accounted for the darker aspects of the poem. What is most important is that she (and we) were looking for a more optimistic future.