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Tag Archives: weather

A Perfect August Night In OV

13 Saturday Aug 2022

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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All of Us, Culture, hot dogs, parking lot, summer, The Spit, weather

Finally. FINALLY. The heat and humidity broke. It coincided with a Friday night and everyone who came out celebrated it. There’s a pavilion across from the small strip mall where people park in the summer when the events are held and there’s no place for the rest of us to park when we need groceries… And you know what? That’s ok. Tonight a lady was teaching a group to salsa dance. An Icee truck was in the parking lot. It was AMAZING and it was a perfect night. I was not there to partake of the event, I just parked in the back so I could get in the store to buy some really dumb groceries. It reminded me of some times I was outside when I was little in the city… loud sounds, music, different sounds and vibes, but not something I was part of but was so curious about.

Speakinowhich, I pulled in and saw a stranger helping a stranger jumpstart his car. Everyone in the lot was behaving. The security guard came out and he was like, “Oh! This is fantastic weather!” He and his co-worker enjoyed the 70-degree, lessened humidity beautiful weather. I went to the store because I was craving hot dogs and Sabrett’s sauce. What I fool I was to believe. Came across the label of an unknown jar called Chow Chow. I’m a northerner and I don’t know what this stuff is. They tell me that it can be used on hot dogs and hamburgers and all kinds of other stuff, but Chow Chow??? I dunno. I decided to take a chance and will let you know tomorrow how it goes.

I loaded two bags into my battled-scarred car and drove back home. Oh? You don’t know about my battle-scarred car? The one with the paint wrecked, pooped on, nectared on, sand blasted, where the car wash can’t even help? And me with a bum shoulder that can’t detail her properly?

Everything is sus to me, but tonight my sus is lessened because I saw a guy helping a stranger jumpstart his car. A person suggested Chow Chow. A parking lot overflowed for salsa dancing in August, so unlike the covid years. It’s cooling off. I’m feeling something. And I just wanted to tell you that it feels good.

My Personal Dragonfly

19 Monday Jul 2021

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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awe, dragonfly, George, nature, rainbow, spiderweb, storm, trees, tropical storm, weather, wonder

Weather comes for us east and west this time of year.
I watch it unfold, prepare best I can
Mostly I just watch millibars and strings and
eyewalls that have not evolved or think they wanna be
but never quite get there
coming to our shores as a tropical storm,
no harm intended but beware, she’s water
she’s nature, she cares nothing about you
and half the time I believe she wants to do us in,
and then this, an orange dusky rainbow in the backyard
proof we were passed over, patting ourselves on the backs
with that great camera phone pic that got twelve-hundred likes on Twitter
But only three of us watched the whole thing unfold
naked, no umbrellas, daring, me concerned but not flat-out afeard,
standing barefoot in lukewarm puddles in the dips of the decking
how lucky we are to be wet mongrels in the world of this day.

A supposed tropical storm came around this way and it was
more like a car wash, normal for this spit of land,
maybe a little more wind and less rain and a weak bough broke in the backyard.
You know, the backyard where the lady built a wall to keep the world out
with clotheslines and moldy towels, a half-assed wall of trellis
covered in black cloth.
We had a bit of wind and water, not much else to speak of and
there he is in my window frame,
my personal dragonfly doing a handstand on a twig, butt pointing to the sky
because a bough broke during the night.
I named him George, George of the handstand, George of the pommel horse
letting his wings dry in the dawning hot sun day
Then he’s gone for days, my personal dragonfly
Eaten or bored
But here he is again, a biplane resting before takeoff for who knows where
His big, big brothers fly west, and I notice there are fewer of them this year
Where are the westerly-flying dragonflies who get a little lost in this
surfrider canyon of yellow walls and sea-foam green doors?
George returns to the twig that looks like a slingshot,
gossamer spiderweb line, one line, awaits but he’s too clever for that
as they are still or pushed violently in the breeze.

George is elsewhere this morning and I have no hope this way or other
to see him again, but I will never forget his biplane glassine wings,
his showoffy handstands, amazement he returns to that same slingshot-shaped
set of branches that came because a wind broke a branch
and nobody but me gets to see you.

December Fog

15 Saturday Dec 2018

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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December, fog, foghorn, insomnia, ocean, sound, weather

I heard rain was coming this week.  I was so excited. I love rain when it comes here, particularly the pounding rain on the roof I can barely hear because the building is built well and my ears don’t hear so well, but there’s just this something that tells me it’s rain and I run outside 20 times a day to see it hurling down and dripping from long, green pine needles.   

I waited up stayed up wanting to hear the rain and all we got was less than what I wanted, a fuzzy drifting wet, tiny things you couldn’t even call drops, more like midges circling the lamp post jostling for the best mate, only a little damper.  That was no rain.  

But fog did come.  When I finally caved in to the tired I stripped and rolled in and watched the orange sky (the one that tells me we’ve got weather, otherwise the sky is mediocre blue) but heard no beating rain. The trees beyond the window didn’t gleam with wet, but the one significant sound was white fog and one calling horn.  The foghorns did not sound all day, it was more like off and on, and mostly the horns are loud from the back bay, not the ones in the channel who tag team “horn” and “horn,” the lowing that I love.  

I slept eventually and the sun rose and moved but you wouldn’t believe it because the sky was white, mother of pearl white, drifting from north, damp, feigning rain, cloaking the sun but the horn keeps calling from the back bay. 

I am in love.  But the persons who pilot ships would not speak so honorifically of the white gray mother of pearl steel fog I uplift here, watching drift. They have reason to care.

Upon Finding The Dragon’s Egg

24 Thursday May 2018

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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amwriting, beach, dragon, egg, fear, Jim Morrison, ocean, pain, poetry, prompt, the Doors, weather

I awoke abruptly, squintingly, because the sun peered in my bedroom window, an alarm my body cannot refuse. Strange sun, Jim Morrison said in his notebook poem, and I opened my door after I put clothes on (but not shoes because no one needs shoes to walk from the balcony to the cool beach sand that was not far away.)  Strange sun well-riz on my right also known as East, the train of cool blue dawn retreated into the distance, laughing gulls squeaked overhead and moved on instead of making their usual mocking laughter from the breakwater that sounds like children a mile away calling out for help because they are drowning.

I walk barefoot on a beach where I found seashells in all stages of their lives tossed on the shingle by an uncaring sea, but all those shells and emerald mermaid’s hair wafting in the tidal pools are gone.  The Army Corps of Engineers came and did one heck of a job building up this little spit of land that had been slowly reclaimed by the ocean one winter storm, one summer hurricane at a time and now my feet trod sand the size of peppercorns instead of soft, creamy quartsy silt I fell in love with, all those tidal pools gone.  I am grateful yet disoriented. Strange.

So this morning I woke and walked and found the dragon’s egg. Should come as no surprise to anyone because the system that came from the west moved in and brought us a week of rain and a night of high wind, fearsome wind too early for hurricane but made us reach for our batteries and bottled water anyway.  I plucked the egg from the sand poor thing blown from her nest, abandoned, knowing that’s the worst thing I could possibly do but when did I ever abide by the rules, and I held it in my hand wondering what could I possibly do?  And then the shell broke, the creamy satin shell broke open and spilled out venom all over my hand and it hurt like the sting of a bee that begins slowly and takes over your interstitial fluids and spreads out and swells because it really, really, does not want you to be offending it yet you have by simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time and you are paying for your transgression. I held the dragon’s egg, seeping fluids hurting so much, but my pride kept me from screaming so I ran down and into the cold, cold water and submerged me and the egg hoping the pain would ebb.  The silken shell stuck to my hand. The venom came forth like a ginger lady’s tresses, Rapunzel-like, then dissipated in the brine. The shell dissolved and my pain dissolved too as I panted hopping foot to foot hoping not to step on a skate just going about his business.

September 30, Morning

30 Saturday Sep 2017

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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Tags

cat, neighbor, ocean, sunrise, weather

It’s always a gift waking an hour before sunrise.  Some mornings are rote and uninteresting, while others are a conscious running away from my bed because I cannot take another minute lying there in a void or in the presence of terrible dreams.  Waking at 2 in the morning is rarely a good thing.

I pulled on my leggings made of penguin skin, or so it seems, for it can keep out the hardest wind, the coldest morning. I pulled on flannel and a hoodie and made way for damp sand and a sun I knew wouldn’t be right where I left it.

The Corgi boys were tussling, cute piles of black and blonde fur, their dad sitting still nearby.   Crone was walking her three: Great Dane and two Vizsla.  One is pregnant and tired (or stubborn) so she leaves her Crone to come sit with me and scratch her back and her butt for a little while.  I offered to hold her leash while she walks the other two, but… she’s determined to keep her three-pack walking.  Otherwise, all eyes are on the east. We are waiting.

Well, maybe not the lobster boat (near) or the small cruise ship (far), and Mister Dante who sits on the patio, pale legs propped on a chair now because his heart surgery changed everything.  Crabs cleaned their burrows, no precipitation forecast for quite a while. There are no fishermen dancing with their nets this morning.

The sun rose not in an orb, gracefully clothed in magenta.  He was orange and fiery and misshapen through the clouds like mashed potatoes squeezed through toddler fingers. Why did I feel I needed to take my sweatshirt off, hot already? A trick of the mind.

Mister Determined has his luggage packed, and he canes his way slowly down the patio. His wife (nurse?) will be far behind, carrying the rest of their bags and they won’t be back for weeks.  I wonder, where do they go?  Meanwhile, I wonder if (or when) the cat across the way will forgive his person for letting her guest dump his orange hood on his windowsill.  Oh… she’ll pay all right.

Forecast

10 Friday Mar 2017

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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Tags

poem, weather

The sky is tinnitus white

Branches, cracked tempera in the window frame

Prayer plant on the sill will sit high and wear garnet today

Her leaves will unfold and sigh in cloudy reprieve.

Some say snow is coming

But it matters little to my rhyme.

I have come to ignore forecasts

Because Virginia changes her weather clothes on a dime.

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