Unreasonably Cold

The Weather Channel's secret transmissions and why I don't watch sports anymore

May 12, 2026

Hi, and welcome to Crow and the Poet where I write poems and little essays about earth + ether usually from the comfort of my nest, I mean bed. Today: a little essay that follows a train of thought from jump rope videos to The Weather Channel to my basketball to mystery novels. Squawk.

Unreasonably Cold

I could watch jump rope videos all day. I love when the jumpers manage to have rhythm. I could watch dance videos, too. I do. I watch jump rope and dance. Not all day but more than you’d think.

I watch cop shows this way too—more than you’d think.

There’s a message from The Weather Channel when I wake up, before I start scrolling for dance and jump rope videos. At first I think it says, “Today is unreasonably cold,” but no—it is unseasonably cold and dry. I am obsessing about the weather, imagining I can feel the plants’ desperation for rain. I can feel it in the back of my throat like those people who are choked by the old hag at night. Just this old, evil desiccation. I’ve told you about those dreams, the demon who steals my voice?

I don’t watch sports anymore, but I will watch dance all day. I used to be a basketball fanatic. I liked thinking about the poetry of it all. I haven’t watched a single game in over a decade. My hoop has been rendered useless for a year by a car-sized hill of gravel. Picking up dog poop, I find my deflated ball behind the garage. Leather crusted with dead leaves.

The reason I haven’t watched basketball in over a decade is because my dad died. He died, and I stopped watching sports. I was eleven or twelve when we started watching sports together. First football, his sport. Then basketball, mine.

This was around the same time I started reading Agatha Christie novels. I’d read one on a Sunday. When I found Tana French as an adult, I was transported back to those Sundays in the sunny living room, the blue velvet couch where Mom would let me read and read instead of the usual barrage of chores.

I just finished the third book in Tana French’s Cal Hooper trilogy. It wasn’t my favorite of hers, but they can’t all be favorites. It was Lena, Cal’s girlfriend. I hated her. She made me want to scream. I’m sure it was because I am in some way like her. I’m sure she was reflecting something back to me, bright and airless. Some black wound, some lumpy mass.

On Saturday, during the Ol’ Bard Poetry Hour, which was a break from yard work involving digging and river rocks, I wrote a poem about plants and signs. But not like herbalist Nicholas Culpeper circa 1651, who gave every plant in his Complete Herbal a corresponding planetary sign (his main contribution to herbalism because the rest of it he just wholesale plagiarized from William Turner’s 1551 herbal), more like clues, signs that illuminate mysteries.

Weekend Work

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

Today I dig, balance, split
in the potting of things
or deep into the ground

Scarlet planting
balm pruning

Nothing in the ground
spells disappointment 

even the elder-
berry’s wildling suckers
darting beneath

her prairie skirt—they want
to be alive 
against my stubborn 
blade. I know 

the joe pye 
I know the great blue
lobelia, the serrated leaves 

of anise hyssop, leaning 
tower of pomegranate
will she live or
won’t she

these are the questions
of existence we must ask

the earth, must dig
must liberate

an intumescence 
of increase

Finally, says the milk-
weed, you’ve seen 
the signs & I don’t know
if I have 

seen anything at all 
beyond what's there,
in the ground

Some of the plants in the poem are in my secret side garden. It’s not truly a secret. If you are an observant passerby, you might peer around the very large white cedar into the side garden where I grow my secret plants: stinging nettle, great blue lobelia, joe pye, violets amongst the tomatoes and gherkins, holy basil, echinacea, yerba buena, broadleaf plantain with tender, wide leaves.

Thanks for reading! Crow and the Poet comes out on Tuesdays (unless I have a migraine or a double migraine! ) You might enjoy by new book of poems, Agatha, or my memoir-in-essays, Head Case. You can get them wherever you shop online, but I link to places like Bookshop.org and Asterism because they support indie presses and bookstores.

I added my “Disrupt” sticker to my online shop. Let’s disrupt these lumpy, dumpy, half-baked-biscuit, old-ass, less-than-mediocre white men sending us into the dark ages. If you order a sticker, I’ll send you two until 5.18.26. You can also buy my books and chapbooks and some artwork directly from my shop. I usually send them with some goodies.

Laurence and I are taking a little break from our tarot project, but if you’re looking for a fun writing prompt, you can find the ones we’ve done already here.

Stay tuned in upcoming weeks for a special segment and handmade goodies for paid subscribers!

Finally, don’t forget to support small presses you care about! One that I care about because they make gorgeous, thoughtful books is Fonograf Editions. It’s their tenth anniversary and a wonderful time to support art that asks us to engage more deeply than a quick scroll.