Peter’s senses observed
until his notebooks were full
the heat of July,
the blossoms of April,
October’s colored leaves,
December’s deep freezin’,
yes, Peter wrote stories
about every season.

And he loved all his lines,
from the first to the last,
till that fateful day
in Geography class,
the moment he learned
what happens to weather
when it travels down south
below the equator
where December gets steamy
and July has snowballs,
October pops buds
and April is Fall.

Peter worried his work
if published abroad
would make him seem like
an unworldly fraud.

But then his frown flipped as
he wrote these introductory words,
“If reading this in the southern hemisphere,
please do so upside down and backwards.”

Pete’s misfit climate was —
Like that! — a win.
‘And all it required,’ he thought,
‘Was one spin.’