Poem: Weather Girl

 

Weather Girl

 

6 a.m. The sky shrieks

with lightning. Thunder.

A hard blow. More lightning.

In air electrified by the storm,

static stands every hair on end.

Delighting as the pressure drops,

I am as alive as the day

in Earth Science, I discovered

a way to love my hair.

Adolescent poster child of nerdiness,

my waves had become my enemy.

A daughter of the Free Love decade

of Breck models and daisied locks;

my crown was a unruly mop

of tangles too curly to comb.

Ironed, orange-juice canned,

blunt cut – nothing could make me cool…

until a seventh-grade science lesson.

It was April – the monsoon season of bad hair days.

Ponytailed and too smart for popularity,

I followed our teacher’s command to turn

the shiny textbook page to the next chapter.

We were moving from the erosion of rocks and minerals

to meteorology – in my envious mind,

the purview of mini-skirted TV weather girls

in white smiles, straight bangs and full bust lines.

Twirling his whistle, Coach Hudson started his appeal:

Weather is nothing more than wind and water,

pressure and temperature, geography and space.

His first pitch: to measure the humidity

of the East Texas air with a hygrometer

made with human hair. But whose?

Then the words I had waited to hear.

It needs to be curly for this gismo to work.

As the whole class turned in unison,

I rose and loosed my voluptuous cascade.

Plucking a single strand, that man made me cry

with scientific pride. Who cared about cheerleaders

or soloists or student council…or boys?

Glad to be alive; I was a weather girl!

             

         by Anne McCrady