Tag: windstorm

Lamenting Leaves Scattered in Ruin

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October’s bellowing anger breaks and cleaves
The bronzed battalions of the stricken wood
In whose lament I hear a voice that grieves
For battle’s fruitless harvest, and the feud
Of outraged men. Their lives are like the leaves
Scattered in flocks of ruin, tossed and blown
Along the westering furnace flaring red.
O martyred youth and manhood overthrown,
The burden of your wrongs is on my head.
~Siegfried Sassoon “Autumn” (about his time in the trenches in WWI)

Over more than a century,
we have learned little
about how to resolve
the bellows of outraged men.

The fruitless harvest of battle,
counting up each violent death,
as warships gather
for unsanctioned war games.

Lament the tossing and blowing of lives
like October leaves, in a show of force
as transient and arbitrary as the wind,
merely to make a fruitless point…

to what end are the feuds of angry men?

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Whatever the Sky Might Bring

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When it snows, he stands
at the back door or wanders
around the house to each
window in turn and
watches the weather
like a lover. O farm boy,
I waited years
for you to look at me
that way. Now we’re old
enough to stop waiting
for random looks or touches
or words, so I find myself
watching you watching
the weather, and we wait
together to discover
whatever the sky might bring.
~Patricia Traxler “Weather Man”

My farm boy does still look at me that way,
wondering if today will bring
frost,
damaging hail,
a wind storm,
a blizzard,

maybe fog or mist,
or soft lazy snowflakes,
a scorcher,
or a deluge.

I reassure him as best I can,
because he knows me so well
in our many years together:

today, like most other days
will be partly cloudy with a snow shower or two
and occasional sun breaks.

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Some Sweeping Blast

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The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop away from you like the leaves of autumn.
~John Muir


Some sweeping blast may suddenly come o’er us,
Lose our place, and turn another leaf!
~Hannah Flagg Gould from “The Whirlwind”

Earth shuddered at my motion,
And my power in silence owns;
But the deep and troubled ocean
O’er my deeds of horror moans!
I have sunk the brightest treasure—
I’ve destroyed the fairest form—
I have sadly filled my measure,
And I am now a dying storm.
~Hannah Flagg Gould from “The Dying Storm”

Last night, the Pacific Northwest braced for a “historic” windstorm with unprecedented winds from the east, through the Cascade Mountain passes, rushing to a low pressure system forming in the ocean. The current term for such a storm is a “bomb cyclone,” followed by an “atmospheric river” – ominous descriptions and even more ominous when viewed on satellite images.

The eastern part of Seattle’s King County was hit full force with more than a half million homes left without power last night. It will be a miserable few days for so many in an urban setting as crews try to repair the damage. We live 100 miles to the north and experienced only mild winds, although there was heavy tree fall damage just 15 miles to the south of us in densely wooded Sudden Valley. Our county is usually the focal point for fall and winter windstorms, but we were largely spared this time around.

In anticipation of this storm, the weather services compared it to the historic windstorm on Columbus Day in 1962 which ravaged the region.

I remember that Columbus Day storm vividly as an eight year old living in Olympia, as the wind gusts clocked in at over 140 mph.  Large fir trees toppled over like toothpicks in the woods all around our house.  The root balls stood 15 feet tall, giant headstones over a mass of tree graves. 

Back then, my family’s home, located outside city limits, remained without power for at least a week. We lost all our stored home-grown meat and produce in our freezer and ate only canned goods, boiling water outside on a camp stove under kerosene lights, roasting hot dogs in our fireplace. We slept in sleeping bags under piles of blankets.

This week, when the predictions poured in about a similar strength storm, we readied our farm’s generator and hunkered down, waiting for the monster to storm into our yards and woods.

But the lights only flickered a few times, the winds meager in comparison to our usual fall and winter storms. Our woods, filled with fallen trees from bygone storms, was left untouched this time around.

I’m among the many relieved this morning, having aged past the challenge of living days without power. Today, as so many will be dealing with the messy clean up, my cares have dropped away like the leaves forced to let go in the storm, settling silent to wait for what nature might bring next.

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January’s Menu

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January’s drop-down menu
leaves everything to the imagination:
splotch the ice, splice the light,
remake the spirit…

Just get on with it,
doing what you have to do
with the gray palette that lies
to hand. The sun’s coming soon.

A future, then, of warmth and runoff,
and old faces surprised to see us.
A cache of love, I’d call it,
opened up, vernal, refreshed.
~Sidney Burris “Runoff”

photo of hair ice taken by Laura Reifel

When the calendar finally reaches this last day of January, resplendent in its grayest pallor, I have to realize there are six weeks of winter yet ahead.

This past month, nature offered many options on the drop-down menu.
Take your pick:
soupy foggy mornings,
drizzly mid-days,
crisp northeast winds with sub-zero wind chill,
unexpected snow dumps with icy rain,
balmy southerlies with flooding,
too many soggy soppy puddly evenings.

Every once in awhile there was a special on the menu:
icy spikes on grass blades,
frozen droplets on birch branches,
hair ice on wood,
crystallized weeds like jewelry in the sun,
a pink flannel blanket sunrise,
an ocean-of-orange sunset.

I realize January’s gray palette is merely preparation for what comes next. There is Love cached away, and as spring is slowly revealed, it will not let me go.

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Let Plainness Enter the Eye

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I have grown tired of the moon, tired of its look of astonish-
ment, the blue ice of its gaze, its arrivals and departures, of
the way it gathers lovers and loners under its invisible wings,
failing to distinguish between them.

I have grown tired of so much that used to entrance me,
tired of watching cloud shadows pass over sunlit grass,
of seeing swans glide back and forth across the lake,
of peering into the dark, hoping to find
an image of a self as yet unborn.

Let plainness enter the eye,
plainness like the table on which nothing is set,
like a table that is not yet even a table.
~Mark Strand “Nocturne of the Poet Who Loved the Moon” from Almost Invisible

I’m only 24 hours into a week-long winter northeaster blow with sub-zero windchills. Already I want to hang up my Carhartts and retire my Muck Boots and toss my work gloves for a warmer easier life somewhere else.

This is just plain hard being a farmer. I feel like I’m losing my bona fides as a tough-as-nails rural person.

Nothing that entrances me about living on a farm in temperate weather is remotely attractive now. Windstorms like this mean I worry our power will go out, the generator won’t work, the water will freeze up and we’ll fall and break bones … and, and, and…

So many fourth dimensional worries, whining, and weariness to spare.

What I seem to forget is that the generations of tough people I descend from made it through far worse than this. They didn’t do it as a hobby, like us; it was their livelihood. Trees were felled and sawed to become tables and furniture and fences and roofs and walls of houses and barns. Animals gave milk and meat and fields yielded grain and hay and gardens and orchards grew enough to store for winter food.

A few days of winter misery is a small price to pay for that kind of sustainability.

Let the plainness of the past inspire the plain hard work needed today and over the next few days.

It is worth doing it without complaining because it is the plain hard work needed. It always has been.

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Fixing Eyes on the Unseen – Let the Wind Die Down

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The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.
John 3: 8

Question: What causes
the wind? Why do I feel some way
in wind?

Answer: Trees
fan the wind as they sway.
Bushes help.
Your heart fills up.
~Annie Dillard from “Some Questions and Answers About Natural History from Tickets for a Prayer Wheel

Let the wind die down. Let the shed   
go black inside. Let evening come.

Let it come, as it will, and don’t   
be afraid. God does not leave us   
comfortless, so let evening come.
~Jane Kenyon from “Let Evening Come”

We’re in the middle of an arctic outflow northeaster that is predicted to blow for several more days and bring snow. What felt like hints of spring have literally gone back underground – the peeper frogs’ song at night is gone, the shoots of snowdrops are frozen in place, delicate buds are in shock, daffodils that recently emerged are now held in suspense.

This is no gentle breeze nor is it a life threatening hurricane. Instead, it is a consistent bone-chilling reminder how vulnerable we are to forces far more powerful than our frail and temporary earthly bodies.

We are not in control, never have been. It helps to remember that.

So we sit tight indoors as much as possible, bundling up when we need to go out for farm chores, yet knowing eventually this bruising air will eventually go still. We ourselves are changed and humbled, with hearts full of the knowledge that God is within those unseen forces. Though we may be afraid of the buffeting sting of a strong chill wind, we pray for the inevitable calm and comfort to come.

And I have no doubt – God Himself will bring it.

This year’s Barnstorming Lenten theme is taken from 2 Corinthians 4: 18:
So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

A Fading Fire

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Some candle clear burns somewhere I come by.
I muse at how its being puts blissful back
With yellowy moisture mild night’s blear-all black,
Or to-fro tender trambeams truckle at the eye.
By that window what task what fingers ply,
I plod wondering, a-wanting, just for lack
Of answer the eagerer a-wanting Jessy or Jack
There God to aggrándise, God to glorify.—

Come you indoors, come home; your fading fire
Mend first and vital candle in close heart’s vault:
You there are master, do your own desire;
What hinders? Are you beam-blind, yet to a fault
In a neighbour deft-handed? Are you that liar
And, cast by conscience out, spendsavour salt?
~Gerard Manley Hopkins “The Candle Indoors”

Sometimes a lantern moves along the night, 
That interests our eyes. And who goes there? 
I think; where from and bound, I wonder, where, 
With, all down darkness wide, his wading light? 

Men go by me whom either beauty bright
In mould or mind or what not else makes rare: 
They rain against our much-thick and marsh air
Rich beams, till death or distance buys them quite. 

Death or distance soon consumes them: wind
What most I may eye after, be in at the end
I cannot, and out of sight is out of mind. 

Christ minds: Christ’s interest, what to avow or amend
There, éyes them, heart wánts, care haúnts, foot fóllows kínd,
Their ránsom, théir rescue, ánd first, fást, last friénd.
~Gerard Manley Hopkins “The Lantern Out of Doors“

photo by Josh Scholten

Now burn, new born to the world,
Doubled-naturèd name,
The heaven-flung, heart-fleshed, maiden-furled
Miracle-in-Mary-of-flame,
Mid-numbered he in three of the thunder-throne!

Not a dooms-day dazzle in his coming nor dark as he came;
Kind, but royally reclaiming his own;
A released shower, let flash to the shire,
not a lightning of fíre hard-hurled.

Let him easter in us, be a dayspring to the dimness of us,
be a crimson-cresseted east…
~Gerard Manley Hopkins from “The Wreck of the Deutschland”

In three days, we have gone from a sub-zero wind chill ice storm from the north to a balmy 60 degree storm from the south, both winds taking out our power and plunging us into a deeper darker night.

Rather than resort to generator power immediately, I break the darkness with candle light. It is only a brief respite as candles burn down, batteries die, and we’re back in darkness again until the power lines are patched and the transformers restored.

Sometimes the Advent and Christmas season can feel like that: a recharge for my faith that has gone dark and cold, a fire lit under me to banish creeping doubt and discouragement. I need more than Advent rituals and Christmas traditions to keep the darkness in its place beyond today.

God doesn’t need beeswax or batteries to keep His Light on.
He just needs us: our trust, our love, our desire for understanding, our need for Him.

We are the candles that shine forth in the world to light the way for those around us who are floundering in the dark.

And that, Charlie Brown, is what Christmas is all about…

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Forgive Me For Forgetting

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Please forgive me for forgetting.
I wanted to go outside and look for you.
I was told this was impossible.
 
I was instructed to stay indoors.
But my words for you need sun.
My heart needs air.
 
I love you Spring.
I miss your warmth.
Come unlock my door.
~Ethelbert Miller “Beloved”

I love you, Spring.
But where are you? Nearly a week of chill winds and freezing temperatures put me back inside the house wanting to hide under the covers. Water buckets in the barn were frozen again, walkways were slick with ice, once friendly breezes threatened to knock me over with their force. This is not the Spring promised.

Come unlock my door, Spring.
When our old apple tree toppled over in the northeast blow earlier this week, I identified a bit too much. The wind took advantage of a hollowed out rotten core the tree had been hiding for years. What might I be hiding inside that makes me just as vulnerable to forces knocking on me, even though I bear fruit as usual?

Please forgive me for forgetting:
this world is at war with evil – families hiding in basements, subways filling with refugees, apartment buildings bombed. Now is when we are most fragile, exposed and wounded. Our lumpy exteriors are on full display waiting for spring to renew and cover us up.

I wanted to go look for you:
Our farm cat decided the old apple tree lying on its side was a new perfect perch to keep surveillance for curious (and irritating) farm dogs without having to climb up high. There he sat on the fallen trunk, far enough above a corgi dog’s head to be essentially invisible although Homer could absolutely smell there was a cat with threatening claws nearby … somewhere. Just where that cat could be remained a mystery to a dog who is distinctly height-challenged.

Like my cat, I wait now in late winter — seeking the sun for my words and fresh air for my heart. And like my dog, I sense something potentially threatening is near, but because of my own limitations of perception, I have no idea just how close.

I was told this was impossible:
may we weather the storms together
may there be peace and warmth for all people
may we find harmony as winter melts into spring.

cat hiding in plain sight, Homer too short to figure it out

This is my song, O God of all the nations,
A song of peace for lands afar and mine.
This is my home, the country where my heart is,
Here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine.
But other hearts in other lands are beating,
With hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.
My country’s skies are bluer than the ocean,
And sunlight beams on cloverleaf and pine.
But other lands have sunlight too, and clover,
And skies are everywhere as blue as mine.
This is my song, O God of all the nations,
A song of peace for their land and for mine.
So let us raise this melody together,
Beneath the stars that guide us through the night;
If we choose love, each storm we’ll learn to weather,
Until true peace and harmony we find,
This is our song, a hymn we raise together;
A dream of peace, uniting humankind.
~Lloyd Stone and Blake Morgan

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Our Weary World Transformed

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I watch the great clear twilight
Veiling the ice-bowed trees;
Their branches tinkle faintly
With crystal melodies.

The larches bend their silver
Over the hush of snow;
One star is lighted in the west,
Two in the zenith glow.

For a moment I have forgotten
Wars and women who mourn,
I think of the mother who bore me
And thank her that I was born.
~Sara Teasdale “Winter Dusk” from The Collected Poems of Sara Teasdale

The towering tree spreads his greening canopy —
A veil between the soil and sky—
Not in selfish vanity,
But the gentle thrush to shade and shelter.

So it is with love.

For when we love,
Simply love,
Even as we are loved,
Our weary world can be transformed.

The busy thrush builds her nest below —
A fortnight’s work to weave and set—
Not for herself alone,
But her tender brood to shield and cherish.

And so it is with love.

For when we love,
Simply love,
Even as we are loved,
Our weary world can be transformed Into the Kingdom of God!
~Charles Silvestri “When We Love”

We are in the midst of a week-long late winter arctic blast of cold wind bending and breaking trees, even taking down an old apple tree in our orchard last night. Our seed feeders are swinging back and forth so violently that hungry wild birds struggle to hang on for their breakfast – they have to fight the northeast winds for their food.

The news headlines also freeze my heart, bringing back memories of old “cold war” threats and posturing of 60 years ago. In this more modern time of global communication, Ukrainian citizens directly in the line of fire become very real on our screens – people with work lives and families and views from their windows shared with the world as they anxiously wait for Russia’s shoe to drop upon them.

I freeze at the knowledge that my commitment to feed the birds in my backyard can’t begin to compare with the weary and war-torn world’s inability to keep starving children alive around the globe – in Afghanistan, South Sudan, Yemen and other unstable places.

I cannot forget our helplessness to love, cherish and protect the young when they are casualties of the destructive web of politics and power.

May God’s love transform our world,
turn our political platitudes to prayer,
bring about a thaw to build bridges, rather than gulfs,
between old enemies.

May love thrive in the nests and homes of parents
who commit to love, cherish and sustain their offspring
no matter where they live on the globe.

May I start right here, in my own frozen back yard,
caring for the young and vulnerable within my reach,
and hope my reach may stretch far beyond my grasp.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVhfWncQYD8

Lean with the Fury

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Today, I planted a young Horsechestnut tree.

So slim and flexible
I could have rung my fingers round that skinny trunk.
Oh, you are built to survive a vernal storm.
Listen to me, though—

endure the wind’s force without resistance.
Lean with the fury.

When you’re nearly bowed over
think broad trunk think sturdy bark.
Someday you won’t bend nearly so—

and to that scared little girl
the one I saw yesterday in the department store

hiding under the dress rack
enduring a mother’s torrent—

I’m sorry.
You won’t bend nearly so
after you’re grown.
~Christine Bodine, “late apology to the scared little girl in the department store” from Souvenirs of Myself

I know a psychiatrist colleague, soon to be 80 years old and still seeing patients, who recommends people should aim to be more like a willow than a chestnut tree. His long clinical practice has given him a perspective of who survives and who becomes irretrievably broken when the forces of life hit hard.

I know I am not one to freely yield to the wind or ice storm. More chestnut than willow or birch, I can tend toward inflexibility rather than suppleness.

This means I easily break when anger and fury abound in the world around me, rather than leaning and bending. What’s left is broken pieces awaiting salvage, feeding the flames of the brush pile with all the rest of the rigid and unyielding.

Yea, if I don’t bow like a willow, I fall broken upon the rock.

photo by Harry Rodenberger

I will bow and be simple,
I will bow and be free,
I will bow and be humble,
Yea, bow like the willow tree.

I will bow, this is the token,
I will wear the easy yoke,
I will bow and will be broken,
Yea, I’ll fall upon the rock.
Shaker melody

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