Friday, 28 February 2014

Storm Light, from Ocean View


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Storm Light, Oregon coast: photo by Austin Granger, 25 October 2012


The big storm looms off shore in black ecstatic light
Preparing us for the violence of landfall
The old weird light of the North Pacific, cold

And deep, bright and dark
The blue wind In the thin black trees
And the pavement in the city street hissing

In the rain so late yet so strong in coming
Making up for a whole season strangely missing
As if until now it had had better things to do




Rain, Oregon coast: photo by Austin Granger, 26 January 2012
 

Rain, Oregon coast: photo by Austin Granger, 26 October 2012


After the Rain, Cape Lookout, Oregon: photo by Austin Granger, 26 October 2012

8 comments:

  1. Wonderful poem... weather and chance... weather as sovereign... needed rain, yet rain's decisive move upon the aged.... Yes... a wonderful poem.

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  2. Yes. Love the ending--as if it had better things to do.
    I wish the snow and rain here would have better things to do!

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  3. This is lovely. You acknowledge the beauty in what sometimes slams us hardest.

    “The blue wind in the thin black trees . . .”

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  4. I grew up just a few minutes away from the ocean and would like to live again in a place close to the sea. The first two lines here describe really well (and beautifully) what it's like and how it feels when big weather is about to strike and then does. The light really is "black," "ecstatic," and "weird." I assume "old" probably applies equally well to the north Atlantic as it does to the Pacific; it must have something to do with the north part. It seems less old in warmer places. Curtis

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  5. I agree with all the above and especially like how the predominant “s” sounds carry this fine poem along.

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  6. I'm with you on the s sounds, Vassilis. I love coming to that cheeky, colloquial last too.

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  7. Many thanks all.

    Stormy nights.

    There is indeed an eerie light out over the ocean, visible beyond the Bridge even from over here, when the big lows barrel in.

    "...rain's decisive move upon the agèd," very much a factor now. The lame, halt pedestrian a too slowly moving target.

    Ocean View, by the way, is what this settlement was called, in the middle of the century prior to the last -- but then the university ate the town, and plastered that other name on everything.

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