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.