Heavy Weather

by Bruce Boston

If gravity changed
like the weather,
covering the planet
in waves and pockets,

fronts and depressions,
there would be days
on which we could
not move an inch.

We would lie helpless,
strapped to the
slowly turning Earth
by a rain of weight

that limited both our
breath and movement.
We would have time
to consider the nature

of such an existence,
to daydream about
an end to the storm
and those perfect

feather days when we
could fly like birds
over cities and forests
as if we had wings.

(First appeared in Asimov's SF Magazine)