California Rains
When the wide brown hills hunch their lion shoulders under a dry wind,
and air sizzles on the horizon as if furred skins were twitching against biting flies,
will you remember these churning, overflowing creeks racing to the sea?
Under the broiling sun of late summer, grown hotter year by year,
While older people sigh, “I don’t remember it like this,”
will you think of the cold rain now pounding the land
until it surrenders, open-palmed, dissolving old sandbanks,
fossil shells and sharks’ teeth washing back to their beginnings?
At storm’s end beneath the arbor at twilight,
seeing mist rise to drift among the redwoods’ enigmatic silhouettes
before a darkening sky, will you recall our refuge of years ago?
Twisted bed sheets striped by shadows of blinds
pulled shut against the brilliant daylight,
those sheets wet with sex and sweat and love,
we drawing breath, hot heartbeats slowing,
still suspended in the slow sweet seconds.
Opening Sunlight
Following a flatbed up Highway 9 in the chill
morning fog, I see it packed with redwood trunks,
none very large, 70-80 rings perhaps, so at least
my age and more. And I thought -
There goes grandma — off to a sawmill -
to be sliced and hacked into boards and dust.
And yet she must otherwise have had
centuries to thrive, assuming she were lucky
and tenacious to survive
storms and lightening strokes, wildfires and drought.
Bark furrowing ever deeper, she would rise,
circling, her sisters ringing her about,
feathery needle tips turning jade in spring,
shifting shadows down.
She would shed her lower branches as she slowly
bloomed into her crown.
And when, at last, her roots loosened their hold,
her fall would open sunlight and she’d lie among
the bones of her ancestors
and the nurseries of her young.
West Cliff Walk
Our world is full of curves today.
Winding the cliff path above a restless ocean,
we trace the lines of brown pelicans’ rise and fall
on their roller-coaster of air.
Cedars rise up in hemispheres,
anchoring the great arc of sky, echoed below
by dolphins’ wheeling backs, offered to the brisk air
before curling down beneath kelp
wrack that rocks a sleeping otter
wrapped in its many fronds. Seabird calls spread upwards,
trebles to counterpoint the complex chords of the sea.
So these curves both hold and beckon,
shift and change on the orb of the earth
as we hold the dizzy moon and circle the sun,
spinning within the galaxy’s spiral arms, a
tiny dot in the universe.
Susan Giddings joined the Peace Corps after education in the USA and spent over forty years in Africa, teaching in a variety of subjects and schools and raising two children (with the inestimable help of husband and friends). Returning to California, she is reveling in retirement, enjoying the natural beauty, interesting people, and stimulating events.
When the wide brown hills hunch their lion shoulders under a dry wind,
and air sizzles on the horizon as if furred skins were twitching against biting flies,
will you remember these churning, overflowing creeks racing to the sea?
Under the broiling sun of late summer, grown hotter year by year,
While older people sigh, “I don’t remember it like this,”
will you think of the cold rain now pounding the land
until it surrenders, open-palmed, dissolving old sandbanks,
fossil shells and sharks’ teeth washing back to their beginnings?
At storm’s end beneath the arbor at twilight,
seeing mist rise to drift among the redwoods’ enigmatic silhouettes
before a darkening sky, will you recall our refuge of years ago?
Twisted bed sheets striped by shadows of blinds
pulled shut against the brilliant daylight,
those sheets wet with sex and sweat and love,
we drawing breath, hot heartbeats slowing,
still suspended in the slow sweet seconds.
Opening Sunlight
Following a flatbed up Highway 9 in the chill
morning fog, I see it packed with redwood trunks,
none very large, 70-80 rings perhaps, so at least
my age and more. And I thought -
There goes grandma — off to a sawmill -
to be sliced and hacked into boards and dust.
And yet she must otherwise have had
centuries to thrive, assuming she were lucky
and tenacious to survive
storms and lightening strokes, wildfires and drought.
Bark furrowing ever deeper, she would rise,
circling, her sisters ringing her about,
feathery needle tips turning jade in spring,
shifting shadows down.
She would shed her lower branches as she slowly
bloomed into her crown.
And when, at last, her roots loosened their hold,
her fall would open sunlight and she’d lie among
the bones of her ancestors
and the nurseries of her young.
West Cliff Walk
Our world is full of curves today.
Winding the cliff path above a restless ocean,
we trace the lines of brown pelicans’ rise and fall
on their roller-coaster of air.
Cedars rise up in hemispheres,
anchoring the great arc of sky, echoed below
by dolphins’ wheeling backs, offered to the brisk air
before curling down beneath kelp
wrack that rocks a sleeping otter
wrapped in its many fronds. Seabird calls spread upwards,
trebles to counterpoint the complex chords of the sea.
So these curves both hold and beckon,
shift and change on the orb of the earth
as we hold the dizzy moon and circle the sun,
spinning within the galaxy’s spiral arms, a
tiny dot in the universe.
Susan Giddings joined the Peace Corps after education in the USA and spent over forty years in Africa, teaching in a variety of subjects and schools and raising two children (with the inestimable help of husband and friends). Returning to California, she is reveling in retirement, enjoying the natural beauty, interesting people, and stimulating events.