110
I look at the weather station.
watch hot wind bend juniper, mesquite.
Off and on clicks electricity, then off.
15 minutes, 20 minutes, 25,30,35.
Slowly, interior temperature rises.
I find the coolest place, read, worry
about refrigerated food.
40 minutes, 45.
Switch flips, ceiling fans whir.
I think: how could anyone live
in this heat without air conditioning.
One happy plant resides outside,
from somewhere in East Africa.
Everything else–wilted.
Yesterday 71 degrees
Balmy autumn day.
Today 31 degrees
Early blizzard continues.
It’s raining! It’s raining!
It has not rained in more than a month.
I run out the door,
spreading my arms skyward.
I laugh out loud, dancing in the rain.
A smile smears joyfully across my face.
I run across the patio,
rain drops pelleting my face, my arms.
I laugh out loud, dancing in the rain.
My dog stands, rivulets of rain running off her.
Lightning explodes, thunder booms bass,
the steel roof plays staccato music.
I laugh out loud, dancing in the rain.
From my book “On the Rim of Wonder”. This poem holds true today. After a summer with lots of rain, it quit. It is very dry with a high danger of wildfires now that the summer vegetation has dried, perfect fuel.
Saturday I discovered your chrysalis underneath the top of a disintegrating cable spool by the red and green barn. At first I remained uncertain about you. Were you really a monarch?
Then I thought, “This is too late; you won’t survive,”
I checked the weather. There is hope. No freeze until late Thursday night.
By Monday evening your chrysalis had turned a dark green transparency; I could see hints of your wings inside.
When I looked Tuesday after horse feeding, you were out, unmoving, wings folded, your chrysalis a hollow shell.
I checked you twice last evening. Still by your chrysalis, opening and closing your wings.
Becoming really worried, knowing a cold front was coming, I puzzled what to do, keep you inside the barn, leave barn doors open, what?
This morning you had moved to the edge of the spool top. Today’s wind and warmth might inspire you to take your journey south; I could only hope, placed you where you could fly away easily.
When I fed the horses at five today, you were gone.
Relieved, I wish you a safe journey to Michoacan.
Eerie. Silence. Fixed dinner, took it out on the patio, sat down. Realized I could hear myself chewing–pasta, not celery or carrots, pasta. What?!
Stopped eating. Listened. No insects chirping, no birds calling, no wind blowing.
Nothing.
Eerie. Quiet, cloud covered sky. No lightning, no thunder.
Nothing.
I looked for a tornado cloud, an explanation. None. This never occurs here.
The sound of no sound.
Early, in that land between wakefulness and dreams, it started to rain. It rarely rains here in the morning; I thought I was dreaming. Several hours later it is still raining. Last night the weather forecaster said we are actually a little ahead of normal for the year, an unheard of event in recent years when endless drought reigned. Because I am thinking none of you who read my blog posts will believe it is really raining that much after reading numerous posts about drought, I decided to take some photos of the cloudiness and wet.
The following poem was written when it had not rained in a long time like this spring when it had not rained for months. Now that is has started raining, it cannot seem to stop, certainly a better situation than several months ago when 50 houses in a nearby town burned down because of a giant wildfire.
It’s raining! It’s raining!
It has not rained in more than a month.
I run out the door,
spreading my arms skyward.
I laugh out loud, dancing in the rain.
A smile smears joyfully across my face.
I run across the patio,
rain drops pelleting my face, my arms.
I laugh out loud, dancing in the rain.
My dog stands, rivulets of rain running off her.
Usually she hates rain.
Lightning explodes, thunder booms bass,
the steel roof plays staccato music.
I laugh out loud, dancing in the rain.
After many rainless months, it decided to rain and won’t stop it. Yesterday I wrote about a nice gentle rain, a rarity here. Today came the deluge. It rained over an inch in one hour. The rain hit the west windows of my house so hard that at first I thought it was hail. When I watched, it looked like a giant bucket of water poured on them continuously. Then the water falls started. When I first moved here nearly six years ago, a lot of rain brought only one giant waterfall most of the time. More recently a lady built a house closer than I would like. She cleared off a lot of native grass, various native bushes, and a number of juniper trees. Even with the grass she planted, water runs off her property onto mine in a little river. It runs so rapidly it is creating a small arroyo which gets deeper each time it rains. Since they predict thunderstorms for the next few days, if it keeps this up we might have a chance to catch up a little on the rain. Hopefully, next time the rain will flow more gently. When it gushes like this afternoon and evening, rocks, dirt, debris wash onto my drive. After the first round of rain, dirt lay more than an inch deep in some places and rocks lay scattered about. I managed to clean off the worst of the dirt before the rain began again.
Living here in the Panhandle of Texas demands an new attitude about weather. Expect anything. I’ve seen it drop 50 degrees in an hour, go from 40 at night to 80 plus the next day, rain dirt, blow dust like fog, snow two feet and a couple of days later reach 55. To an outsider, this may sound dreadful but I find numerous pluses: the sun shines most days; it is not humid; summer days can be a bit of heaven on earth even if hot during the day–perfect evenings for lounging on the patio with food, friends, and wine; winter does not last forever and neither do the winter clouds. Winter in the Midwest is downright gloomy. Not here.
Now I am going to bed, hoping lightning streaks and thunder rolls do not awaken me at 3 in the morning.
Initially, I planned to continue my Apocalyptic Planet series, but today’s events caused me to choose otherwise. As I sit here writing this, I can see the endless blowing dust through the spotted window. Sometime today, while I was at work, it sprinkled while the dust blew. Now every window on the east and north side of my house appears as if someone had thrown handfuls of nearly dry mud at it. My black car looks the same. The wind whistles in the flue of the wood burning stove in my bedroom. This storm blows harder and longer than the one we experienced last week. Tomorrow they forecast more of the same.
Saturday I stopped by two greenhouses to purchase some hanging baskets and native flowers. The mesquite trees kept telling me, “Wait, wait. Cold will come again. Wait!” Normally, I obey what the mesquite trees tell me. They never come out until they know without a doubt the cold is over and they feel safe. I bought the flowers anyway. This coming Saturday, Hilltop Senior Citizen Center in Amarillo has their Gala at my house to raise money–complete with a silent auction, food, and drink to raise some much needed money. I want everything to look springlike and pretty. I heard the weather forecast on the radio coming home from work. I just looked again on the Internet. Frost predicted tonight and even colder tomorrow night. After I fed Rosie, placing the alfalfa as much out of the wind as I could, I brought the hanging baskets inside and poured a bunch of water on the other new plants. The native plants, tough, worry be little. The others will not survive 33 degree weather. Later, I will go out and cover them with old towels, hoping the wind relents and does not blow them off.
Everyone here posts photos of the dust on the Internet and gripes about this horrid weather. Although I certainly dislike it, I refuse to complain. This, too, is tornado country. I listened to the news this morning and again coming home from work. Thirty four dead, whole towns destroyed, a new school flattened. Here I see no devastation, only the endless, depressing, annoying dust and wind. My friends, family, and I are alive, our houses intact. Rosie huddles behind the barn, still healthy, neighs when she hears me coming. Gratitude engulfs me.
Rosie
The iris I was hoping for.
Looking through the window.
The steps climbing up the hill to the barn.
Outside the office window.
My patio which I will have to eventually shovel–afraid to do so today because the wind is so strong.
The barn door before I shoveled my way in.
The view out the double barn door. All this is actually under a roof. The wind is blowing the snow everywhere.
The view from the front door after digging it out twice from reoccurring drifts.
The new assignment arrived for my prose poetry class. In the last couple of hours I have read poems by Baudelaire and Rimbaud as examples of some of the first prose poems. While I read them, I listened to “The Unicorn, the Gorgan, and the Manticore” by Menotti, a piece I am supposed to be singing in 1 1/2 months. Work shut down today because of a massive blizzard. The wind literally shrieks down the canyon where I live–gusts they say to 70 mph. It piles up drifts four to six feet high. Twice today I have donned my boots, gloves, heavy coat, and gone shoveling and to feed the horses. For the first time since the barn has been there, snow is actually inside, driven by the wind, and the horses are standing in snow drifts that blew under the overhanging roof of the outside runs. Even getting to the barn door necessitated shoveling through drifts taller than I. The snow continues, predicted for another twelve hours or so, maybe as much as twenty inches. Living alone fails to daunt me, but I cannot concentrate well today. My drive is long and climbs up a steep hill. Even my four wheel drive truck may not make it. I keep thinking it may take days for me to shovel out even if, when the snow and wind cease, my neighbor brings over his tractor to help. A friend, several miles away, remains without electricity. I filled my wood burning stove with wood and started a fire just in case. It seems a perfect day to write and cook and practice music. And here I sit unable to concentrate long enough. The wind keeps rushing through my brain.
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