The sky has turned a dense gray color. Long flashes of lighting can be seen diving behind the trees on a nearby ridge. No rain drops spotted yet, wait a minute, there it is. Moving across the field like a curtain being drawn. Finally after a couple of really hot dry weeks it’s raining. The crew cutting the hay in the field just barely finished before the wetness fell on them. They’re scurrying about picking up their equipment and hurrying back to the truck and tractors. The tractors have nice enclosed cabs that I suspect are air-conditioned. The wind blows the rain against the building for a few seconds, what a wonderful sound. A quick storm just passed. Everything outside my window looks like it got pretty wet though. I can’t wait to get outside and feel the coolness of the lingering air and smell the rain soaking into the ground. Hope I remembered to roll up my car window. Oh well, it’ll dry.
Rainbows
Yesterday while driving from Canton to Candler with Marcia and the grandchildren, Paul, and Jonathan, we saw a rainbow. I’m not sure if JZ actually saw it or not, he claimed to, but you never know about him. Paul saw it and kept trying to find more colors. He was pretty good at noticing the subtle colors out near the edges of the band.
What made me pay so much attention to this simple rainbow was that it stretched all across the sky in a huge sweeping arch. Marcia commented that it resembled the McDonald’s golden arch. I don’t know about that but it was amazing. In my entire life I can never remember seeing a rainbow stretch from horizon to horizon before. Normally I’m lucky to see one with no more than a quarter of the full arch. I couldn’t help but look at it, which was probably not the best thing to do as I was driving. It was very bright with orange, yellow, pink, red, blue, and violet lines.
We told Paul about the story of Noah and how the rainbow was God’s promise to never let it rain as much as Noah saw again. He thought God making a promise was pretty cool. I thought the whole experience was cool. Just goes to show you that you never get to old to enjoy the simple things in this world, nor can you say you have ever seen everything.
On Bukowski
My first reading of Bukowksi’s poems,
Stumbled on them accidently, looking somewhere else
For answers I think.
How moving the language of his eye
Real as if standing with him,
Looking for ways to write, to become a writer
I stare at his page and think
Poems are what I really want to write
but I so seldom do these days
looking for other ways
to say, I’m a writer. Something commercial
To claim that success has found my pen
Is where my mind has been. I’m a poet
A writer sells words by the page
The poet gives away his heart
Or causes you to feel his twisted rage
What does the poet know
Of how to make a dollar
Bukowski knew it didn’t matter, the money
It’s nice to have. Writers are easily found
Poets on the other hand
Are few
(inspired by “to the whore who stole my poems” Charles Bukowski)
August in Western
August in Western
North Carolina
The summer skies burn.
A cavatina,
Of Thunder playing
Rain falls violently
Cool wind circles ‘round
Momentarily.
Water on the ground
Like rushing rivers
Thunders’ chorus ends
Steam rising to meet
The bluing sky, sends
Waves of moist heated
Air so thick the lungs
Complain. Western North
Carolina in
August
West of Asheville 