Weather or Not

Climate Change, that crazy cousin of Mother Nature, has been dancing around the edges between winter and spring for weeks now. He is like a precocious child that has been given a wind machine and an air heater and he viciously flies up and down the coast raising the air temps on one side and then running up the wind machine from across the farmlands on the other pushing the colder air into a fight with the warmer air.

Then when he gets a good thing going he sits back and laughs at the wet lightning battle. 

We watched wide-eyed as 100 foot trees were flung back and forth and the smaller branches ripped from their hold to be flung into the air like crazy missiles.  We frowned as the river climbed high over the dock and pushed its way up the stone path toward the lawn.  We watched the sky turn angry charcoal as the sun began to set.

The rain that was released was nasty and flooded roads and lawns.  The lightning was frightening forcing all the creatures into shelters as the dark approached.  We sheltered down in the basement sitting near the storage room which is solid concrete block on two sides as the land line and cell phones rang over again and again and the TV sirens went off warning tornadoes were on there way.  Fortunately few touched down and none near us.

It was over in less than an hour and the Climate Change cousin got bored with the game and decided to fly over the Atlantic and play with the big boats.
  

Winding Down

The winter wind is shushing me
too loudly
pursing cold lips
against the flat window pane
and hissing and moaning
like some rude, unloved librarian,
having turned out 
all the lights,
having re-shelved 
all her dusty books
so that tables are cold-heartedly bare,
having glared with Stygian determination
across the vast echoes of time depleted of hope, 
and
drawing a gray bedraggled curtain
partially hiding that steel/still cold moon
as if darkening the winter night
with its pinpoint star...stark darkness
hurling one last angry rattle
to check 
that the doors are indeed locked
before throwing her cape across the gust
and pushing the wind
to bang relentlessly at my door.

The Rampage

Last night the predicted, bitter arctic air left Santa's homeland and savagely battered and whistled outside our door and strained at our windows for hours.  We hide ourselves beneath a soft throw and watched the first episode of Season 4 of Downton Abbey which I had taped earlier.  It wasn't until after the TV was off and we headed to bed that we heard the howling, moaning, and groaning of the angry winter wind.  It was frightening and haunting.  It was all those things that make one think of the death of others and even their own death.  It was the loneliest sound I had ever heard, much worse than the sad nostalgia of that midnight train whistle that drifts aimlessly across an open field. It was Father Death determined to stay and embrace.

Snow had been predicted after midnight, but when I woke, as I sometimes do, at 4:00, the landscape was dry and brittle under my porch light.  I did not open the front door for a more fearless view for concern that I would startle the little wren that lives in the woodpile that we have stacked on the porch.  Sending her out into this wind-sheared night would be certain death for her.

The thermostat said it was a balmy 12 F outside!  They, those weather people who find these dramatic episodes a gleeful part of their career, had predicted 6 F which would have been even colder when multiplied by the added wind chill!  Were they disappointed that they were wrong? Did they 'Aw,shucks' that this had not been accompanied by a blizzard?  Were the people up north who have endured this winter's anger for the past two weeks even sympathetic that it now covers two-thirds of the country?

Where were all my feathered friends hidden?  Had they found shelter?

I made some coffee and waited for the sunrise and answers.