Weather Reports

Some of the readers of this blog may know that I write songs in my spare time -- usually, with an emphasis on the lyrics. This passion began as a passion for writing poetry in my college and graduate school days, under the mentorship of some very fine and patient poets, including Elizabeth Bishop I am proud to say.

With kids, work, and life squeezing out the time needed to reflect and write in the more pure form of poetry, I turned to songs, but one of my goals on this trip was to re-kindle my passion for poetry.

At the risk of boring the fair readers of this humble blog, below is a recent trio written while under passages:

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Weather Reports

1. Ratios

Building outrigger sailing craft

at Ropitui, the navigator said:

Cut the mast to the length of the raft,

and the outrigger to one-half the height of the mast.

Shape the rest by eye.

The teacher said: Her hand is as big as her face,

And be sure to leave enough room for her head,

Which is once again as big as the sky above.

Divide the sky into quadrants. Track Orion to Sirius.

Learn the tidal cycle. See the way

A moon quarters, the full sun, an emptying sky.

Now, pay attention. Fill the sails carefully;

Explore her eyes; and take note of this weather,

whose ratios change, my friend, as we do,

Sliding across water that won’t sit still.

2. Nudged

Without a care, the curling tip of a passing swell tugs at the dangling line,

Tugs twice, then tugs again, and now the errant line starts to slip back, slide down,

Over the side of the boat’s hull, gathering speed as it falls into the sea.

It’s deep here, and the line drifts in lazy swirls to the ocean bottom,

Snagging string-like jellyfish as it tumbles bitter end over bitter end,

Settling in a tangled mess on a seabed of new rock, white sand, and dead plankton.

After a time, the rope spawns a colony of new life:

Bits of algae, small crustaceans, and soon, fish, and more fish.

When the line eventually rots and disappears, this underwater oasis will seem to have always been.

(This all might have been foreseen, even predicted

Days ago when a deepening low began to push northwestward

Building waves as the wind backed to east.

Someone might have anticipated the new foresail, and new lines,

A new direction even, and might have noticed the way the sailors

Moved quickly (almost carelessly) as they readied the boat.

This way, it might not have been a surprise then,

This accident of timing: the wind shift, the loss of an unsecured line,

The beginning of a new life in a new place.)

Years later, you and I sail across this buried world, not recalling

That in our own time, that’s all it took: a shifting of the breeze,

A chanced tug, a gathering of weight, and a brand new world.

Who remembers the wind, a wave, that falling?

Can anyone stop themselves, mid-ocean, and refuse?

What choice do we have, nudged from our lives by distant changes in weather?

Take delight in carelessness!

3. Deciphering

Examining the sun as it falls lightly

Behind the darkening horizon the clouds

Give way to layers and the diminishing

Stature of perspective. Pink-edged

Limbs and soaring heads are transformed,

And look -- there’s one I knew in Connecticut,

And another from Mexico. The dark one

With feathery arms from Costa Rica, and that one

Over there with the billowing sides could be anyone

I once knew.

So many clouds, not rising but backlit, taking shape,

Recalling names unbeckoned,

Arranged casually into an accidental biography.

Is this what weather brings? This creation of memory

From bits of cloud, a coloring sun, a falling sky?

There’s Donna, and Christina, and was it Carrie … Connie … Callie?

Such hard work, this deciphering.

Jon Glaudemans

May-June 2010