Tag: Weather

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.

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.

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.