Great Winds
a poem, a reckoning
Reports from NOAA indicate that the West Coast is currently being “walloped” by an atmospheric river. They call this one “The Pineapple Express,” which only makes it marginally more palatable. Moisture builds up in the tropical waters near Hawai‘i and dumps heavy rain and snow in northern latitudes of the U.S. and Canada. Say, if we can’t have the tiny umbrellas and sand between our toes, at least we can have water that traveled from those climates. Mele Kalikimaka.
Today I linger over a year of reckoning. What matters? What’s left after the gusts die down? God, today you dusted the morning with the faintest pinks and grays. You woke the dark-eyed Juncos and finches from a cold night. The grasses are lush and stretching. God, today people are communing with one another and with you. They are using their blinkers. They are leaving baked goods at doorsteps. They are sitting on the floor around a table. They are laughing and weeping and singing together.
The sky is a forgiving, exhausted pale blue now. The leaves are decomposing in piles by the fences and curbs in a precious gold solstice sun. A propagated Christmas cactus blooms just in time.
This poem is from earlier in the year during a separate visit from an atmospheric river, on a day I thought the world would shake loose from its own hinges. I should say: the sun appeared, even then. Even today. A few dear former graduate school classmates workshopped this one (big thanks Alea Peister, Cameron Brooks, Laura E. Lucht). They know more than most of my poetic obsessions with wind, rain, precipice, asyndeton— and bear with me anyway.
Concerning the Great Winds of October Twenty-Fifth
I.
I wake to the sound of the cat’s claws
scrambling, bonking, clambering
over the wood fence by the window.
She’s headed for shelter in the birdseed bed
under cobwebbed chairs in the shed.
Here come the rains. They were on the winds yesterday,
wrenching leaves like burnt confetti to whirl for a while.
They were tangled in the fog, tangled in the trees,
hovering over the rugged coasts, collecting themselves.
Here they come. Best head clumsy for cover.
II.
A western bluebird rests on the red fence. The grey sky textures. It mists. His brown breast trembles as he tilts his head toward the reflection in the window: mine. He waits a turn, and then falls, falls toward berries on the little plant packed and pecked by four other birds.
III.
How we let the denial rule
even what we expect of wind.
Never that much damage.
See me, the leaves say.
See me now? See me
in scarlet and maroon,
in pale and pressing embers.
I’ll fall at your feet,
whip across your streets,
plaster myself to your windows.
I’ll pile up until you cannot deny.
