Member-only story
Melbourne is Waiting For a Cool Change
A weather climate rain humidity poem
The whole city waits. We know how it works.
Hot, hotter, hottest. We endure. Turn on the air con.
Watch the news and updates for bushfire alerts,
just in case.
Then the weather girl in this week’s fashion disaster
tells us when the cool change is coming.
Yeah … We breathe in, out, check the clock.
She said it will be …
Well, that’s usually how it works.
Except this summer, we sweat, the air
weighs on us like a wet blanket
mixed with dog and cat hair and fug.
This is not Melbourne, we cry.
Send this back to Queensland!
Every move makes our skin slick,
our faces shiny, our moods grumpy.
A storm. Yay! We ache for rain, for a southerly,
for something to relieve the pall of a humid summer.
This is not Melbourne.
Finally. We stand at our back doors, watch the rain
pound the earth, fill the pond, hammer the roof and …
still the warm, gluggy air pushes in.
We all cry, “Will I ever sleep again?”
Will we?
