National weather

The coat you left by accident in my car
the day I drove you to the airport
in a grey pour of rain
remains full of your cologne
and indefinable climates.
Now I watch weather reports
try to imagine
from temperatures
and barometric pressures
how you're feeling
what you're doing
a continent away.
Even when you were next to me
I only verged on guessing
the vast systems and fronts
that moved unseen beneath
your quiet surface
when I whispered some small thought
or laid quiet myself
after the tiny throat-clearing
pause that came before you
careful and catching
revealed another
tiny fragment of climatic data
another small trace of your self.
We had not always spoken easily
but you tried
to understood me
held me in telling silence
cupped me against the worlds' winds
with your midnight hands
and as you did
I saw more clearly
the patterns and pictures
in your roiling clouds
learned to trust
shifts in your variable skies
as you'd grown to trust mine
warmed my own erratic currents
in the changeable corona
of your sunrises.