It is weather

The storms that passed through Illinois and other states yesterday left my environs almost untouched. We had a brief interval of heavy rain and strong wind in the early afternoon. And then the sun came out, though the wind continued for several hours. Other cities and towns were not nearly as fortunate.

When I think about weather, I think of lines from Philip Larkin’s poem “Talking in Bed”:

Outside, the wind’s incomplete unrest
Builds and disperses clouds about the sky,

And dark towns heap up on the horizon.
None of this cares for us.

The weather is not destructive or unforgiving or violent. It doesn’t care about us. It just is.