Monthly Archives: February 2024

WAITING ON A BLUE EVENING

 

Despite the advance of new scientific instruments utilized for weather modeling, this year’s  Atmospheric River phenomenon for Central California hasn’t followed predictions.  However, we have enjoyed beautiful weather and average rainfall standing currently at 10 inches with March and April yet to go.  Last summer seemed cooler, fall and winter warmer with yesterday’s high reaching 71 degrees.

 

Robbin snapped this photo about the time the deluge was forecast to arrive yesterday evening, but it didn’t start raining until 3:00 this morning. I love the rainy days, almost always smug when the experts are wrong.

 

BODY BURNING DETAIL

 

                  Arms shrunk to seal flippers

                  Charred buttocks thrust skyward

                  They burned for five days.

                                    – Bill Jones (“The Body Burning Detail”)

 

The tangle of limbs piled

like Bill’s poem from Nam,

oak skeletons and cadavers

 

turned hard and brittle

ache from drought,

rings parched of memory,

 

native history become ash

up in smoke. Perhaps my years

personify the tree, allow

 

empathy for these witnesses

to wild centuries before the West

was tamed, offering acorn meal

 

and shade for cattle,

ever-tuned to the telepathic

as they chew their cuds.

 

 

REVISITING RIP VAN WINKLE

 

Flash after flash above

a steely barrage of pellets—

an opaque torrent of gray rain

 

cut by the crack of thunder

as if the gods were falling timber

or sawing logs—

 

or just inebriated

in the mountains

playing nine pins.