March 20, 2012

First day of spring, and a line of storms ready to create havoc.  I got up early to pick up my order that got to the school yesterday afternoon.  The storms were supposed to hit around 9 am so I thought I would go and get back before they arrived.   The sky was charcoal at the northern horizon and swathes of gray and darker gray all around.  No bright sunrise this morning.  In the peculiar light, the grass was greener almost than in full sun, a kind of fluorescent green.  Wind from the north steady and gusty at times, bullying the trees into bowing before it.  So much motion it almost makes you seasick to watch them for any length of time.  And the birds have slept in, or taken up shelter in silence.

When I got home, just ahead of the front, the sky darkened to nearly black and as it approached, there was that green light, weird and shining, tornado light, and though we had a few warnings there were not any spotted, yet the air had that electric thrill just before it began to pour.  It's been raining for hours now, there was enough lightning that I did not go to the computer except to check the weather and then turned it off.  I had plenty to do with sorting out the kits for the girls yesterday.  The lightning got pretty close but it never made the power flinch.  Rumbling is all around but we can't see much actual lightning.  Rain is still falling though not nearly as forcefully as it was earlier, it's tapering off now just a steady sprinkle.  Now the sky has lightened up, shades of gray lighter over head and darker at the horizons, still windy, my back porch chime is making its own song, random and bell-like.

Storm Warnings

 
The glass has been falling all the afternoon,
And knowing better than the instrument
What winds are walking overhead, what zone
Of grey unrest is moving across the land,
I leave the book upon a pillowed chair
And walk from window to closed window, watching
Boughs strain against the sky

And think again, as often when the air
Moves inward toward a silent core of waiting,
How with a single purpose time has traveled
By secret currents of the undiscerned
Into this polar realm. Weather abroad
And weather in the heart alike come on
Regardless of prediction.

Between foreseeing and averting change
Lies all the mastery of elements
Which clocks and weatherglasses cannot alter.
Time in the hand is not control of time,
Nor shattered fragments of an instrument
A proof against the wind; the wind will rise,
We can only close the shutters.

I draw the curtains as the sky goes black
And set a match to candles sheathed in glass
Against the keyhole draught, the insistent whine
Of weather through the unsealed aperture.
This is our sole defense against the season;
These are the things we have learned to do
Who live in troubled regions.

Adrienne Rich

I do not draw the curtains, as I want to watch the storm in all its enormous vigor.  We are not proof against the weather, though at times we would like to be, and what she says about weather abroad and weather in the heart alike coming regardless of prediction is surely true.  Measuring time, by clocks, and watches, and computers, and now phones, is not control of time.  No one knows that like me, time is as unruly as the storm, sometimes racing ahead, sometimes stalling out, yet we would not want to be without it.  There are things we learn to do, we who live in troubled regions, and one of those things is keep an eye on the weather, watch what it is doing, be prepared to batten down, or to escape.  Storms have their own travel  plans that they share with no one, they might give you a general idea where they are going and when they will arrive, but don't hold them to it!

We are supposed to have another round of rain tomorrow or late tonight . . . we'll see if it sticks to its itinerary.  In the mean time, we can hope most of it will be over before time for the cars and their passengers to turtle their way home.