Tag: Weather

Farm House Kitchen

~ SamF

(Granny’s Porch – Part III)

Chance the big window again:

Steady watcher of lives, 

Arbiter of time.

Soon, a new April sun,

Will check the clock,

And beckon the worn out times,

Still hidden in dusty corners.

.

I only remember frail fingers

Wiping down the pane, distorted by years,

Sparkling like piano keys,

Touched by children,

Where the sharpness of notes,

Hovers and holds,

Sprawling across the old wood floor.

.

My grandfather grasped her hand,

To dance that one day,

Then, after a year,

His death was bathed in a soft-smiled comfort.

We were mesmerized,

While our sadness,

Was framed in the hard line of rain,

Faithfully passing.

.

Soon, granny’s gospel hymns fade,

Her soft hums trailing off,

Leaving the creak of the back door,

Where the kids still run in,

And out,

Chasing the first flowers of spring,

Reaching for the sweet nectar in the skies above.

When Fish Call

~ SamF

Every year, an old friend visits,

Knocking on the morning door,

Before the chickens go out.

Just for a day,

Maybe two.

.

The old rivers of light and heat,

Much alive, cry 

In their thirst for night,

With the promises of fading evenings liquored

In the scent of blackberries and stale grass

Hiding in the hot afternoon.

.

This crooked summer: 

Like wilting vines on a broken arbor,

Motionless, as they cling fast 

To the memories of serpentine edens.

Steelhead (part II)

~ SamF

Our darlings of winter,

Tell us once more,

This passing of water,

That hungry denial of patience,

You so much waited for.

.

Your stories to fill a coming empty:

One last time.

Oh, please.

.

Our darlings of winter, 

Give us this one day.

.

How many times,

Have we seen this moon set,

Sharp crescent,

Sliver of time,

Counting years,

To cast once more,

A warm May evening?

.

Our darlings of hope,

Freedom, maybe,

From bondage of self and season.

.

Please.

If you go down that way

~ SamF

The slick waters will hold you there.

.

Time will become afternoon’s fast,

Before it curses the evening.

.

There is nothing moving water cannot cure.

Slipping gently downhill.

.

I just love swinging that fly through water I know.

.

One fish took me five years.

The others came back-to-back.

On a warm October afternoon.

The next will be my life.

Daring to dream a death amongst cobbles

On a liquored blackberry evening,

When the wind disappeared.

.

Fodder for caddis,

And winter’s green water to come.

New climates and old winter base flows

~ SamF

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.

Celebrating the 4th Rain

~ SamF

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.

How we Count tombstones;

~ SamF

The graveyards of climate:

Like fishing,

where a scant few days are easy.

.

But mostly,

August’s forced languor

to some other eden,

Far from this nihlitude of sapped topographies,

Calls us down.

Now: the dusty dry interludes of impossible

Hell hole hermitages of heat.

Oh, Hell yeah!

.

And those cruel, cheating soft years.

.

Neah, the feint tries of Autumn:

Failed shadows of yesterday’s

Arguments over long drives

Through once watery green valleys

Where tiny creeks had life:

In those old memories we write about now,

And dream of,

Before the tiny earthquakes stir us,

From the empty, dark hour before dawn.

.

All this:

Left behind now.

.

If I could wish on a genie,

Just for this time:

Give me the geologies of water,

Grandma’s fountain,

once again.

A Gathering Gale

~ SamF

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.

Another Poem on a Windy Evening

~ SamF

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.

Unwritten Notes

~ SamF

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.