A grudge of clouds, little spats of rain,
afternoon an everywhere of seethe and haze
as of some malocclusion in the brain
until, crash, the downrush and whiplash
of the pent wind and the hellcat hail
shattering the glass of seventy-one Chevrolets.
Poor Mal, old pal, dead a decade now,
yet salt and sudden in your boots and gallons,
surveying this disastrous after
with nary a curse, nor hissy to pitch,
but calmly, wonderingly to lift
a lug of ice big as a pig’s snout
and, like a token of unluck, and with that avalanching laugh,
crash it through the one windshield in your lot
miraculously unstruck.