sky diary

overcast day on ground level.

then, some minutes after takeoff: blue sky.

.and below: the skeleton of a landscape -
and mountainssmountains, filled by clouds
an.ins,ilike by a river.

----
DL (more skies: here )

Cartography

What is beyond our ken
our flight plan
.....................................we approach via kenning
.....................................and boarding passes
(sun-bearer
frequent-flier
salmon-eater
aisle seat, pretzel-sated)
.....................................Re: direct, say indirect: miles approximate
.....................................and maps thanks to flatness distort all ways.

The trip will take longer than you think
(it will).
.....................................For Baltimore to Tallahassee on the cheap,
.....................................introduce Atlanta. Sleight of land.

The effect on climate of grid lines. Near the equator winter evaporates
from poems. December's residual locale,
a relic
buried
in hot dirt.
.....................................Bacchanalia of abundant summer.
.....................................Matrix of three hundred warm days.

Lazy logic of if-then, crosswise: "close enough" permits miscalculation,
attendant skewed graphs.
Lines of demarcation and lassitude
of terminal latitude.
.....................................Sweep of margin punctuates a gulf
.....................................shown here in green.

-----
words: Amber Coady

stormchased

What enticed us to walk so far down the beach? Warm sunlight on our skin, salt-scented breeze. When we got warm, we splashed in the water, where the curling waves pushed up foamy aprons of cool surf. Then we would wander over toward the dunes, where the crabs dug their burrows and lines of clustered shells had been left by the tide. But always moving toward the point. Walking in the company of black-headed gulls and groups of scurrying sanderlings. Walking to the rhythms of the crashing waves.

The point of the island had always seemed too far before, but this morning it felt so easy to just keep walking, kilometer after kilometer up the shore. So we walked far past the last of the families with kids splashing and screaming with delight, past the surf fishermen, past even the fitness walkers, until we had the entire expanse to ourselves, except for one couple far ahead of us. We meandered toward the point until the first flash of lightening and later its boom of thunder made us notice the storm that was creeping and building over the point.

We turned around, and the car park area at the end of the beach where the lifeguards and people were looked hopelessly far away. The people themselves vanishingly small. The distance yawning open, like looking through binoculars the wrong way. We began walking back as the lightening and thunder continued behind us, and soon that other couple came running past. "We have to run," the woman said apologetically. They ran ahead of us and soon grew small in the distance.

I would have run, too, but my partner was not going to run. Not that she was unaware of the hazard. "Could we be any more exposed to a lightening strike?" she asked. "Maybe if we were hugging a steel flagpole," I offered. We did walk briskly though.

The storm moved in our direction, and the clouds grew heavy with darkness as rain poured behind us. It grew, with part of it moving out to sea beside us, so that it was almost encircling us. We walked, the lifeguard chair tiny in the distance, but not quite as tiny. We walked, feeling the cool wind from the storm on our backs. We walked and the bathing area of the beach grew a little closer. Cold raindrops scattered down on our backs. The storm was gaining on us. We walked. Then I could see it, our blanket and our things in the sand ahead. Maybe we would make it.

Finally we arrived at the deserted bathing area and gathered our things as the rain began to fall. We hurried over the dunes to the car park, where just a few people remained. The danger and sensory intensity was exhilarating. But we were relieved to be snug in the cozy car, from where we could appreciate the beauty of the storm in a different way.

Retired Widow

Each evening, the
piano plays her fingers,

on keys that’d open
the night beyond

twelve. Once in, skies
expand remembered

days, after lighting
cigarette at the porch.

Its burn is long on him,
restores ashes, years

---
words: Michael Caylo-Baradi, California (more)

The Non-Painted Door Standing Alone In The Center Of The Prairie

or:
Being Slowly Covered With Snow

a landscape of Canadian literature, as crossed in grade 12

I am a wooden door. The pioneers were too cheap to paint me before they went away. I have no house to connect me to some useful purpose. I stand, alone, in the center of a barren prairie. In the distance, I see nothing. Except for some wheat fields. And maple leaves, blowing in the cold Canadian wind. And a random beaver. I wonder what the beaver's dreams have been, and how they have been crushed.

Clouds gather on the grey sky. I hunch over against the emptiness and isolation, and of course alienation, wondering desolately why Canadian literature got stuck with all the lousy angsty themes.

Snow starts to fall. A lumberjack wanders by. He's not OK. He wonders how the hell he got to such a non-forested place. I agree. For there is nothing here. The snow begins to fall harder, and the wheat withers away. The beaver dies of boredom. The lumberjack starts cutting himself. Blood is red against the white snow.

Now I am being covered by a choking metaphorical blanket of snow, because apparently snow is always intense on the prairies. The snow is a subtle symbolic bit of pathetic fallacy to show how the physical landscape reflects my dark mental landscape. I want to fire my landscaper.
I wonder... something. Something deep. And alienated.

It's cold.

--
- Kathryn, Canada

window to life

---
image: V. Ulea, Pennsylvania (Ulita.net)

double rainbow

---
image: Brigita Pavsic, Slovenia (soul flowers)

Red Damselfly

The day hints rainbows
in a drizzle mesh.

No matter.
She collects pieces of sky

on her wings
as her family have done

since the book of Genesis.
Silver light

climbs up her dress
like the curl of a rose petal.

She tickles my ear
with whispers

that slip into the skin
of the mere.

She leaves me
with the empty breeze

and a private song.
Sunshine in a capsule.

---
words: Gordon Mason, Scotland/Spain (Catapult to Mars)

night

night is another dimension
exisiting right next to our days

waking up early
i watch the last stars fade into dawn

orion, venus, - and there, an owl
sitting like me, sitting outside

present, then gone
just like the dreams

that roamed my sleep
without leaving a trace

Time to Sit and Stare

It was a night of pouring rain. The last fury of the monsoons. In the morning, a hazy sky. Clouds hanging heavy still, almost wondering if they were to pour their woes. Dozens of pigeons swinging on the telephone wire in front of the house.

And then, for just a moment, a faint peek from a tired sun. A straggled crow lay in wait. Framed for that moment in black. Just a moment.

tearing

feel the morning sun
tearing holes in the night-
chilled shade of the forest

skywards

black forest sunday
road slope stop

a wooden bridge
an unnamed stream

leading into a forest
of green calm

of trees growing skywards
while they steadily

keep losing ground

~

Forgotten

Forgotten smiles, remembered memories
Simmering in my half empty coffee cup
Making their way across the freeways of the mind
Grasping on the reeds of time, they seek to find
Loving glances. Timely touches. Promises on paper

Forgotten ways, remembered paths
Those days spent in Jayanagar bazaar bylanes
Wind along misty crevasses of life
Brushing past the damp cobwebs of dreams
Lured by melancholy and sweetness, so they seem

Forgotten music, remembered echoes
Tunes from my favorite singers
Dance their notes off the walls of the past
Percolating through the blurred eyepiece of tomorrow
Blissful tones shaded with happiness drenched in sorrow

Suitcases full of hours and minutes
Lie in our hands
At times heavy with enchantment and magic and illusion
At times light with hurt and grime and lemons
It's the handle of the suitcase that matters
Lift it gently or it can lie in tatters
Unlock Fate, lose the key to Destiny
Before Life closes its shutters

~~
words: Swati Nair, India (more)
photo: Dorothee Lang, Germany

solstice

winter solstice ~
when disporportional darkness
most overshadows daylight

but in this time of
endings and beginnings,
balance is regained
by encompassing the whole

for in the southern hemisphere,
this same day is gibbous
with summer's beginning

cloud traffic

winter morning sketches
of thoughts
_________of dreams
on a paper
________in the sky
a white plane
reaches
an invisible moon

(inspired by the morning news program below)

Morning news program

Wait, don't reach for the remote
to flick on the television news

Listen for the calls of the migrating birds

Watch the traffic of the clouds
as dawn washes the sky with colour

Feel the throbbing of your pulse
syncopate with the heartbeat of your lover

Tides of breath
Taste of mist
Feel of the earth holding you
Scent of night's blooms closing
Light of day opening

Let this be your morning news program

cold delight

Man, what a sunrise today. Overhead that infinity of black and the amazing moon, the crescent so bright and the orb so dark, strangely like a yin-yang. And the god who made maxfield parrish was at work in the east, with such subtle colors low on the horizon, a mixture of blazing daylight in India and hot African deserts blending into the green of Asian terraced mountains and the aqua of Mediterranean shallows before plunging into infinite sea deep blue. Ah. A cold delight.

you deserve a good paddling...

rain
flooded
prairie
sometimes
lake

celestial tea

between night and morning
i wake from a dream
that doesn't leave a memory
get up in darkness
brew black tea

a cup later, still lost
in nocturnal musings
i open the window,
to let september air
touch my breath, lean out

and see her for the first time -
venus, dancing over dawn
while the moon sails so high
that it remained invisible
through closed glass.

distraction