Susan Landgraf

Change in the Weather

My four-foot-eight grandmother spent hours
under the kitchen window she couldn’t see out of.
She intuited the weather: no rain by 10 so not until…
She’s gone to bones under a headstone
and I don’t have the recipe. I have TV forecasts,
but this time of year it’s obvious: grey skies
even if there’s no rain. Last night I dreamed
a storm came in, dumping feet of rain, a torrent
rushing down the driveway, me leaping
the surging river into my grandmother’s house
that had not yet floated away. She’d been willing
cargo in the hold of a ship from Hungary to America
escaping hunger and war. Even now rafts and small
boats bring the lost who hope to be found.
But I know there’s a border patrol now. I know
there are guards waiting to send seekers back.

Susan Landgraf was awarded an Academy of American Poets’ Laureate award resulting in a book of Muckleshoot Indian Tribe poetry published by Washington State University Press. Journey of Trees will be published in May. Her other books include Crossings, The Inspired Poet; What We Bury Changes the Ground; and a chapbook Other Voices. More than 400 poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Poet Lore, Nimrod and others. She’s given workshops and readings in the US and abroad and served as Poet Laureate of Auburn, Washington, from 2018 to 2020. She lives at the edge of the Bingaman Pond protected area.