Waiting for Weather

It must be dreadful to wait for the wrath of a storm like Wilma or Katrina, wondering if the hit will be a direct whammo hit , or will one be spared as the monster skitters off toward other unfortunate souls. . I work with someone whose aging parents live in Florida in an area where there is still damage from two years ago. They won't leave and there are no shelters.

This evening on the treadmill, I read an article about two companies based in New Orleans and how each handled the issues and problems as a result of Katrina. They had totally different methods of dealing with the storm and subsequent damage to business, but each business coped and will survive.

Yesterday I recalled my grandparent's storm cellar in Kansas. In the summer, thunderstorms rolled across the plains with ungodly regularity. My grandfather would get up at night and go outside and look at the sky. Based on what he saw, we would all be herded into the cellar or not. He would also leave the cellar to observe the sky again and give the all-clear-go-back-to-bed signal. How did he know? Was it spending 60 seasons studying that weather?

I lived with my grandparents during the summer when I had my first real job. The house had no air conditioning, not even any fans. I slept upstairs with my head literally in the window to pick up the slightest breeze or bit of cool air. About four in the morning, just when the temperature would be cool enough to sleep, the robins would begin their song, and then all the birds would chime in. I must have spent a summer without sleep. Started smoking. Learned a lot about life. My arches fell because I refused to wear icky white waitress shoes while I spent all day on my feet on a concrete floor. So it goes. You can't tell a fourteen year old anything.

Tomorrow I'll tell you about the garden and the chicken coop and how I grew up eating the best food in the world. In the meantime, here's a poem about Kansas weather in the summer.

Harvey County, Kansas
1995

Here, where combines shear the wheat,
Flat on the prairie, far from cities,
Seared by seasons, lashed by winds,
Sprouting corn and hay and milo,
Near to meadow larks and creaking windmills
Crossed by gravel roads, under infinite stars,

Here, where cottonwoods shade the creek,
On an evening in mid-August
When the ground radiated green warmth
And the air rested heavy and silent
The sun, in a psychedelic display
Of orange and drama almost tawdry,
Set down a challenge.

The moon, no slouch,
Answered by rising titanic red,
Peering over earth's edge,
First timid, then bold, like a surprise lily.
Rising. Red. Rising.
Signaling a spent earth primed for harvest,
Whispering to the southern wind.

The Kansa were the people of the south wind.

Frolicking across the countryside
The south wind soars to the summons,
Ripples golden corn and sways sun flowers,
Dances through stubble fields and shelter belts.
Stirring dry ghosts, waking old spirits.

Driven by ancient intensity,
Boiling up the thunderheads,
Blasting funnels over the dark plains.
Then, in a damp gust of rain, softly
Sinking like the fireball sun of August,
Fluttering like the feather of a meadowlark,
Vanishing like the
People of the south wind.