Chamber Music by Jordan Zandi via Little Star

1
No one knows where the storm came from.

2
Scratching their heads—the weathermen. The satellites
bungled the news. Clumsy
instruments. Then somebody said:

It’s just a projection.

3
Yet hadn’t the dog in its doghouse howled;
and didn’t the cat jump down from the roof?

4
Inside mangroves a man docks his boat.
Inside his cabin he rides in a storm.
He opens the bottle of wine.

Outside, the storm peeks in through the porthole.
And the wind is frisking.

5
Here is what else a storm’s eye sees:
it doesn’t say much

            but it sees me.

With a ukulele. Having a memory.

6
Pink and cheap—the ukulele.

Although the storm

7
—it changes nothing.

Sting of the sky’s electric string-release!

Which changes nothing.

8
Was I the man with wine and a boat?
I wasn’t the man with wine and a boat

but the boy on the dock
was me.