Outstretched into a warm, fetching wind that will define this winter.
Your arms,
Frustration and reaching,
One more time.
Your arms,
Grasping my lumbering, cold body
Shaking,
Pulled from a creek,
Thundering in flood.
.
Your arms,
Will soon hold me, bedridden and tired of the years,
Finally.
Your arms,
In April, as the sun’s hope returned
And I slipped easily into the familiar light,
Cast across us both in one last embrace.
There, at the far end of the long, ramshackle yard,
Where grandpa’s garden starts,
And the apricot tree:
Pilfered Mockingbird delights,
For us, the watch from a circle of chairs
Some Sunday afternoon.
.
But that was before the rain,
And the wind, and shuttered windows,
Only to peek, to scratch its belly,
We knew when to stay in
And dash out,
Before the water came
Or in between.
.
Then we were graced with the long showery spring,
Great stories I was since told, in thunder and sun,
While I huddled in fear of night and flashing sounds,
In the time of peas,
And chicken manured spring gardens.
.
The San Joaquin would run high that spring
Into the summer
When the first zucchini bloomed,
And we rinsed the last of the mud from our socks.
Like it always was,
Back there, where the water still was.
Gosh,
How the hydrology seeps back out of our bones,
Pouring across landscapes gone silent,
And waiting.
.
This is the way way it used to be,
Like some song playing in the corner juke,
When bars crowded early
And left well before closing.
.
This storm won’t give you resolution
Not yet,
Years will go by
Until the sun sets on a foggy bottom land
In the stalest of latest possible summers
When water is again a pastime,
As the next wind blows:
Turning heads, and raising the mutterings
Of those who still live out there.
Like old days come to visit again,
Now the dampness will live here,
For a good long while, Defining
Hopefully
This place and this time.
Soon, the waves of hungry cold
Will take the leaves,
Peaches, pears, finally the apples.
Always the last apple.
.
Released, now
To a brief ease of playing in a fickle sun
Soon covered by the gauze of quick rains.
Rains that sneak through,
Leaving grand dripping choirs
And the late night sounds of wet soil.
.
The day opens to waters passing,
And the joy of new light.
Overhead: the soaring sounds,
Calling.
Down here:
The edgy electricity
Jostles limbs,
Loosening blackened blooms
And thickened tassels
Of tiny pears to the back porch
Wind chime chatter.
Damn these winds!
To stir stale oceans,
Stomping seasons,
And lifting life anew
In their leaving.
The jostle of limbs,
Loosening more tiny pears,
To the erratic beat of restless wind chimes,
While overhead, the soaring sound persists.
Down here: an edgy electricity.
Damn those winds!
That stir oceans,
Recharge life,
And change seasons.
In one fell swoop.
And those we wish we had written.
.
After 42 days, look for a change in the weather,
Subtle,
Maybe just the light, for a moment,
Or a shuttered day in clouds.
Regardless, someone’s head will turn,
Like catching a whiff of silence
Almost. Another curious pause,
In a rarely checked routine.
.
On that day, I should be drawn back in:
tempted by the familiar,
Sinking back into the reflection,
Or falling to the side,
In difference.
.
Just leave me some thread,
Or mark, to orient,
And resume. I’ll finish this poem,
And the others too.
Remind me!
When the wind turns,
And a quiet spell might linger.
Remember the winter that barely passed a month?
And then came the sun.
Yes, still cool enough
To host lingering frosty mornings.
Until the heat came,
And February anniversaries
Were forever changed.
On that exact day thirty years prior
Snow, days of snow
Then ten days of ice five years later
Frozen,
With the surprise light dusting
Of sea level snow for a casual two year memory.
.
And then the rains would come again.
Now,
I tenuously hold on to a line in an article
Discussing the human experience
Of a changing climate:
There will still be good days.
The River is now a great bridge:
The one constant stretching morning
Across the entire day
All the while folding it,
Neatly
Gently,
Back into night.
.
In between:
Freshly poured green water,
Water of life,
Calling water.
Water that hides things
And
rarely reveals them.
.
Even the rocks revel in their newfound tones
Shining on their neighbors with the latest
Deepest
Hue of translucent
stained
Distant
blue.
.
Born of morning,
All the shadowed eddys,
Boxes,
And dark watching spots,
curiously,
Slowly,
Lengthen day’s best work,
In their icy stillness.
.
Dinner is jars of old elderberries,
And struggling greens, lost
Between the miseries of heat
And bugs and thirst
nearly quenched,
While seeing the path ahead,
Pitted, dense,
Still tough..
To where winter will set stride.
.
Cravings of sweets
in the soft, cloying dampness.
Chilled, but
cleansing.
All this:
From vistas of feet
on velvet landscapes,
To the endless jostlings,
Riding across this great bridge.
As leaves loose summer’s grasp
They become ghostly ballerinas of the still air,
Glistening,
On the annual pilgrimage to winter’s soft cradle.
.
Morning here lingers well into the afternoon
And shadows replace light
As the preferred method of telling time.
.
Soon, the first winds will stir,
And the old days will be back,
If just for a moment.
Shaken Rain 