His favourite word was precipitation

Agog, we'd wait for it,

Windchill factors and average

Mean temperatures too, while once he showed us

How to make a weather station

 

He's dead now

That kind of geography extinct.

Its Climate Studies now, scaring kids,

Breathing in anxious jargon from

Melting ice caps and rising sea-levels.

Their future.

 

Slide rules rip up thermometers, old Crotty's truths

Splinter into child neurosis.

I just can't see him

Wanting to roll that old tongue around plastic seas and

Mass extinction.

As glaciers scarper

He must be revolving in his urn.

For myself,

Though pitying these kids

I'm glad I dont have any

-I just hope it all blows over