It was a good Sunday here, aside from a few cold symptoms, slow and lazy, and ideal for reading and pondering. I hope yours was everything you’d hoped for, and that your Monday will surprise you by being better than you expect.
I had promised you, a review of the new book Local News from Someplace Else, by Marjorie Maddox, and that is finally coming in the next post, along with an explanation about why some things take time to write properly.
But for tonight, as a preview I bring you a poem that feels perfect for the rainy November midnight that is blowing outside my window. You might have read this piece already this summer if you follow Tweet Speak. And now that the book is out, I hope you treat yourself to a copy. No collection of poems I’ve ever read confronts the dangerous but beautiful world we raise our families in as deftly as this one.
Meteorology
All day the skies pour, then threaten, then pour again,
making good their promise of gloom,
a comfort really, that what looms eventually crashes down,
rains itself out, or not completely, intent on furthering
its pessimistic forecasts.
Still, there’s relief in reliability,
that what each cloud coughs up
gathers and builds on the eyes’ horizon,
expectations deepening
with each darkening hue.
And so I crave even the low, rumbling
of our longest-forming sorrows,
the truths of all predictions moving past
updraft to downburst to calm.
From her new book Local News from Someplace Else
© 2013, by Marjorie Maddox, WIPF & Stock Publishers
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- An October “Treat” from Poet Marjorie Maddox (dadpoet.wordpress.com)
David J. Bauman 
You are right, David. This is the perfect poem for a late November night … even here in Northern California, where it is not raining but it is cold and damp … and we know eventually the rain will fall.
I look forward to your reivew.
Happy days, David.
Jamie
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I had recorded this last week, and so was posting wrapped in a blanket last night, not watching the news, unaware of what was going on in the mid west. Numerous tornadoes touched down, people dead and missing. It puts the poem in perspective now, especially since all I got here was a garbage can blown around.
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Well yes, of course, and then there is the situation in the Philippines. 🙂 I wasn’t even thinking of that, which is strange since we are looking for my cousin.
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Yes, I had made a big facebook post about that, forwarded on ways to help. . . Still, it makes the poem harder for me, but no less true.
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Much to ponder as rain falls on a chill night after an Indian Summer day. Will put this book on my list.
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Ah…I missed the rainfall here at home…having take refuge in Hawaii for a week…glad to find you fine reading upon my return.
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Oh, I am so sorry you had to endure Hawaiian weather for a week! 😉 Glad you are back and enjoyed this though. 🙂
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