Tag: climate

West Coast Therapy Sessions

~ SamF

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.

Climate: part IV

~ SamF

Your voice,

Hoarse, crackled and thin,

From the still shadowed corner

Of a landscape, starving,

And touched by the end

Of a once great circle,

Now warped

And faded away from time.

.

Will you walk with me again?

Sketching the Klamath in November

~ SamF

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.

Sketch from the Orchard

~ SamF

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.

Journey to the Rain Latitudes

~ SamF

The pink clouds are a surprise.

A glowing refreshment,

Then a long exhale

Of a wearied man having trudged so long

Through dust,

Succumbed to the dull stone,

Scraped in thorns,

Pasted in stickery sweat,

To a vista:

visited before,

Briefly.

.

The slow release into newness,

And old places returning.

.

This thirst will not go,

It’s scratching, clawing,

Snatching nights,

And holding fast in the haze of dawn.

.

Give me the sweet smells of loam,

And damp leaves.

Passing edens

Languishing

In the softness of decay.

.

My long exhale,

Reprieves from these gasping anxieties,

Before I sit and listen,

To the sharpening air,

As the first water

Falls on the dry grass.

Anniversaries

~ SamF

And Summer’s Dwelling.

Now:

The soft urgency of evening comes as a call of light.

Light in windows,

And the closing edge of shadows,

Where far off night calls for tomorrow’s respite.

The last places fold themselves into corners,

Where sounds hide,

Descending,

Slipping into a quickening stop now,

While yielding to the hills beyond

Staring down at our polka dot splendor,

While they wait their turn.

.

Now, the calendar gets marked,

Not in numbers and squares,

But in these lines,

Those corners,

And the rough shapes of passed time.

.

Now I remember this path,

Where it led,

How it was worn somewhat,

But tread in new shoes,

At a steady pace,

To the whims of clarity,

And the luxuries delivered

From the old shadows

Lurking all the while

Among the familiar.

Ancestral Valleys

~ SamF

Ancestral Valley

Scales across piano keys

Playing brisk,

With rising hills

Hiding their own verses

from the broad, watery grasslands

Where the deep ebb and flow of tides

And storms

And winds

And floods

And in the great dryness

Things move

In a time not meant for lingering,

Things pass

And begins the vast wait for new:

A return to the gently rocking cradle.

The Many Solitudes of Sun –

~ SamF

Life on the ragged edge of a Mediterranean climate:

Born raw

Again this morning

Sudden, under the monotony

Of unchanged days.

What’s left to tip this scratched record?

Slipping beats, mercilessly turning

To an old song

Still sharp and biting

But in new ways not heard then.

How far south

Or north

Or just across

Do I need to go

For the broad skies

Painted in pastel masteries.

Haunted eden,

Before the waiting time resumes.

The light still slides

~ SamF

But plays to a bad rhythm

A bad rhythm going down.

.

Again,

Some of this time might linger.

Mix.

Into the endless eddies of days

But is quickly lost

On the downhill slide.

.

One day, crazy boisterous

The next,

Of long slumber,

Or the deep haze

Cast across dry fields

And the aches fired by dust and wind.

.

Here the days slide with the light,

The rhythm of new times again.

Experiencing Climate (in progress)

~ SamF

Afternoon breeze:

Throes of some beloved time

Mark this place,

Scribbling old, stale letters,

With the earth casting the scantest of shimmers.

.

Recalling its vast flatness,

Where things far gone

Seem close,

Is a breeze that weans all

From time’s pulsing song

And the golden bars of space.

.

Lazy:

Like days on end become.

.

Secretive:

Passing through leaves

And other spaces.

With barely a gesture:

Surprising in its arrival,

Fading in its passing.

Like lifting a finger

To a circling moth

And seeing another

Move along a ragged edge of focus:

Near soundless wings a flutter.

.

The breeze sits and waits

‘Til all else passes,

When it will stand and tell stories

In a hushed voice

That carries far,

Like grief and love

All mingled in the fields:

Meeting for the first time.