D.R.'s Spoon

2012-01-25T13:50:00.001-08:00

Here are two poems by Taylor Graham I really enjoyed. Hope you do as well and that she doesn't mind.

Taylor Graham

HOW THE STORY GOES

From heath-land to plain to escarpment,

broken reed at water’s edge, we’ve

searched for the bridging point, a way

across. Past summer, the air’s still

full of wasps, yellow swarms like tiny

ticking clocks too fast to count how time

passes into fall. We find their

paper-nests empty, deserted as winter.

I keep a paper-journey, journal

of passage place to place, always later.

Green rooms of grain-fields scythed.

Click-tick of rats in stubble, dry music

that repeats in dream. Night

watches, fires seen as far as the horizon,

swarming distant light. Life is always

a flight risk, time indigenous

as a rodent’s tooth. A king in exile

seeks home, memory, his mind. And so

we wander. How does this end?

Shadows drain color from landscape

on the other side. In time,

the page I write is paper consumed

to pulp. Tomorrow

we might find the bridging point.

MESSAGES TO EARTH

—Taylor Graham

We sent our Curiosity to Mars. But waiting

is so difficult for humans. What could we ever

solve? death, or love, peace, or hunger, life?

Late at night, might a computer record blips

from space, to chart them like French

or German for tense, mood, and person?

I follow rabbit-trails of dream in my sleep.

But my hair reaches out wild in all

directions, antennae for receiving signals.

One who knows names of stars

gazes into the night sky focusing on

the brightest body, visible at solstice

this bleakest time of year when the soul

seems ice-crystal. Planet or star?

Are its pulses a Morse code we might

decipher, to learn a language beyond

our grammar, our tongues to pronounce,

our human translations?

New Year

2012-01-02T14:02:00.000-08:00

I liked these house images a friend of mine put up on Facebook. The poems are from last month at Medusa's Kitchen. Enjoy. Happy New Year.

O ALL THAT IS TRUE

O all that is true and beautiful
In the story books of children
Are the lights that make her
Skin glow so that the Powers
And the Principalities come
To sing before the Throne of her smile.

And she sees everything. The rat
Gnawing its way into the soldier's
Body, the claw and eyes of a great
Bird depends on her lovely eyes
And this dirt is made to run
With blood again and again.

O I believe in life. The sun cresting
The morning with its new light.
O I believe in love and all who do
Not are the enemy of truth.

And still they will come and bend
Their heads to please you but you will
Have wonder holding your hand,
The perfect shape of everything.

______________________

THE CREATION OF THE UNIVERSE

Make no mistake, the darkness
Will come to the perfect world.
These songs are but the wings that carry
Us into those green and breezy hills.

The red deer move on the top
Of the hills. Their shadows are
Bright yellow and look like flame.

You won’t find anyone if you climb
Up past the house and the barn,
Where the cabbage has been planted.
It looks like a bouquet for giants,
But purple with leaves big as
An adagio lost on a plain
Or a field of ice. We, yes, we can
See you even there. See the sun
Is coming even at this hour to take
Itself from the tops of waves,
Huge sheets of light full from the
Leaves of trees. We wait by the camp
Fire, telling stories.

MEDUSA'S KITCHEN

2011-12-31T10:54:00.000-08:00

medusaskitchen.blogspot.com has published two of my poems this morning, last day of 2011. I was surprised to find that "The Trees Learn Their Standing" a poem I wrote just before I went to sleep last night was published this morning in the Kitchen.

I was even more surprised to find that Taylor Graham and I, without every speaking to each other used a very similar image in our poems there this morning. The phrase was 'magic with the hands' Go to the kitchen and have a look.

PENTECOST chapbook pubished

2011-12-29T09:53:00.000-08:00

Today I've posted two etchings by Dore, a photo of Mount Fuji looking as mysterious as it may and Raphael's lovely angel.

Green Panda Press in Cleveland, Ohio has just published a chapbook of my work called PENTECOST. They have only done 65 copies. At $5.00, that's less than a $1.00 per poem.

Books In Print

D.R. Wagner 'Pentecost'. 6 poems, 9 pages. cover art by Gustav Dore. stapled, stamped, no fold. 2011. 60 copies made. $5.00 (shipping free in U.S

how to pay, u wonder? paypal (to greenpandapress@gmail.com),
check/cash (to Green Panda Press 3174 Berkshire Rd., Cleve. Hts.,
OH 44118).

Here's the title poem"

PENTECOST

The last of nothing drifts by.

All of space is now occupied.

We are now ready to receive

The Holy Spirit. It does not

Come as tongues of flame,

But occupies the cells of the body

Like crowded subway cars at night,

Full of dozing riders and people

Reading books as if their life depended on it.

We cross the tracks carefully.

We are unable to recognize anyone

We pass. Balloons of vision lift

From the clouds of people, rise up,

Are lost in a reaching of hands to grasp

The colorful strings dangling from them.

The gift of tongues is ours once more.

Touch our hand and you shall be healed.

No one believes this to be true. We buy food,

Giving away bars of chocolate and plastic

Wrapped sandwiches. Some shed tears,

Thanking us as we move forward.

Times like this will come again.

The seas lash the shores. Tornados

Sweep the kingdom. Fire consumes

All that is left. We suffer fools

With their predictions and admonitions.

This is indeed pentecost. We can not name it other.

Illuminated display boards at the exits flash

Our names and show grainy images of what

We are supposed to look like. We lose

Ourselves in the crowd, the buzz of understood

Conversations in every language of the world.

THE CREATION OF THE UNIVERSE

2011-12-19T16:58:00.001-08:00

THE CREATION OF THE UNIVERSE

Make no mistake, The darkness

Will come to the perfect world.

These songs are but the wings that carry

Us into those green and breezy hills.

The red deer move on the top

Of the hills. Their shadows are

Bright yellow and look like flame.

You won’t find anyone if you climb

Up past the house and the barn,

Where the cabbage has been planted.

It looks like a bouquet for giants,

But purple with leaves big as

An adagio lost on a plain

Or a field of ice. We, yes, we, can

See you even there. See the sun

Is coming even at this hour to take

Itself from the tops of waves,

Huge sheets of light full from the

Leaves of trees. We wait by the camp

Fire, telling stories.

MASK MAKERS BIRD after Taylor Graham and 3 photos

2011-11-19T10:33:00.000-08:00

These poems first appeared in Medusa's Kitchen.

MASK-MAKER’S BIRD

It was only the mask of a bird

There was but a whisper of music,

A tempting scent of wild thing.

We could never remain inside.

A gleaming spell fashioned of mahogany

Seemed to pull us just beyond.

We felt we were but sweet captives of night

The mask would draw us down.

We studied the shape of the bench

Just below the mask. We wouldn’t

Let these shapes desert us, that his

Was a persistent thing, a wing a bird,

A shape of madrone but still forming

Itself, unfolding itself like a song.

We could not explain the piercing eyes as carving

Rather as a truth that we could know

Spreading toward us, opening a perfect emptiness

The point where imagination is as pure black,

Over the edge of understanding we watched

Or seemed to watch the way wood

Can find form as would bone.

We heard it sing this bird,

This mass of twigs, this truth, this mask.

THE TRANSFORMING ANGEL

Those were not tears at all.

They looked to be tears but

The purity of their crystal

Migration was like a spell,

The mouth of some errant wind

That had become confused when made

To carry the finest perfumes,

The memories of those near death,

The glass of children realizing

They have been left alone for too long

And no one is coming for them

Except the night. Corridors

Open to the cold but promising

Some safe haven, some exchange

Where trinkets are traded for

A few miles of dark woods

That have remained outside of history.

When we least expect it

The glittering of a star held

In the hand, the comforting

Word given as a token, unexplained,

Unexpected and undaunted by

Any disturbance in the atmosphere.

It is at these times when

Great silence enters any room

We occupy and holds us in its

Thrall. We will beg for any other

Answer. All we say will look

So like tears. All we feel

Will seem to be the purest

Liquid meant to redeem us,

But they will be rivers, rivers,

Truly rivers and we will find

Ourselves upon them knowing

That they are most powerful,

That they bear us where they will,

That we have no idea at all

Where we are going or what those

Choirs of angels could be or why

They might be here at all.

Three poems and some images of mine

2011-11-10T08:07:00.000-08:00

I should keep up with this but everything seems so crowded these days and so hard to do anything. But I am writing a lot.

CAPES AND CLOTHING

She puts on the cape of swans.

She puts on the cape of darkness.

She puts on the cape of dim music.

She puts on the whispering cape.

She has the songs already in the chamber

When she fires. They look for corners

In the night where they may hide as darkling beetles

Do. She puts on the chorus of stridulations.

It is so easy to be distracted, to look away,

To lose sight of her movements. She wants

It that way and drives her car as if it were

A moth finally escaped from the flame charms.

The sea horns begin to make their low pitched

Bellows. “There are dangerous rocks here,”

They announce without any words at all.

Everyone cowers in fear, the sound of the waves

Crashing against the cliffside. Let us hurry.

Bring the instruments. Find where the words

Are kept, what shapes may be noticed in deepest

Night, where the moon is resting right now.

She puts on the hood of stars.

She puts on the shoes of the sylph-footed.

She makes the gestures learned from the old days.

She slips away before we ever get near her.

THE DAUGHTERS OF LONGING

This belongs to the night.

It has those lights about it.

It has that shape we love

That curls into our own body

As we lie abed, not sleeping

But remembering how sleep

Was and what kinds of gifts

It brought to us.

We are unable to speak,

Think ourselves still asleep,

Covered in the cream of darkness

That pulls on our legs, urges us

To dance if only for a moment.

We stand upon the water.

This must be the part of dreaming.

But we find we are water, we

Move through one another,

Scooped into an iridescence

That we can barely remember,

“Mommy, I was glowing. Am

I still glowing? I think I am.”

There is Saturday everywhere.

The morning leaks through the blinds,

Slides across the room and finds

Our eyes. “Yes, you are still

Glowing.” Right now, it’s the sun

On your skin, the soft, tiny hairs

On the body captures light for

Its moment and fills the morning

With smiles that will stay with us.

They are the daughters of longing.

CARGOES

Ginger and cotton,

Pistachio nuts, poppy seed,

Nutmegs and raisins,

Muslin, red and gold bolts.

A vocabulary of things.

Our conversation could not

Find words and did not use

Them when they could be found.

A drape of fabric was more

Articulate than talking of its

Form could ever be. Rain

Was always welcome. It made

Great gestures that caused listening

From both of us. We undid

Mornings and stumbled to our beds

Describing with a sweeping hand or

By pointing at the moon behind

A screen of leaves showing only bits

And splatter of the night in

The trees. It was more than enough.

They were our cargoes. We took them

To bed with us, our heads swimming

With dreams even before we laid them down.

TRYING TO KEEP THIS ON TRACK- a new poem

2011-09-27T22:41:00.000-07:00

Bill Roberts at Bottle of Smoke Press in Deleware is going to do a chapbook at some point of my work. It will be called private archeology. BOS does excellent work and I am honored.

PAIN IN ITS OWN CITY

They have left us alone.

The ice itself is quiet,

No shrieking or whooping moves

Through it. Even the wind has left

It alone like the end of a story.

The skin begins to seem less

Of a barrier and more like chordal

Movements in an adagio for strings.

Suddenly there is plenty of room left to just

Sit with the others by the sides

Of the road and listen to the questions

Posed to us by the travelers.

We do not wonder any longer.

This place was once a city.

When we look now it still seems so.

We can see the ghost buildings through

The rubble, think the dark crows, swans,

The crying of the children, the kind of dreaming

Worth remembering. We have come too far

To leave this place now. Some still

Fight with each other for a place

To sleep or possession of a blanket.

We look toward the palace, wondering

What it will be like there. No one

Remembers being unhappy. Every room

Seems full and bound to memory

As waves to the flat sea surrounding

Us. Superstitions abound, collecting

souls to form desires one can still

See as they take on faces, erase others

Or are erased themselves. They mingle

With their pain to give it form

To fill the places where the soul suddenly

Becomes empty and obvious, left

On a corner or in a doorway without

Any of its moments intact. They disrobe

And claim to be princes and high ranking

Women who came here long ago and now

Possess all the things they see around them.

We see sand and those things that cause

Unhappiness. We wish them possibilities.

They truly think we are only songs.

Michael Diaz-12th c. Irish work-Harry clarke-etc

2011-08-27T10:56:00.000-07:00

BUNCH OF DIVERSE ILLUSTRAtions etc. + Boris Karloff in his greatest role. Lovley Brazalian cover from the 1950's some Irish illustrators and the delicious images of Michael Diaz. Just one here but more to come. The Wyeth illustration is a good one. The Great Falls is Passaic in New Jersey in full flood.

Composers-Jolly Roger-Wyeth-Pyle

2011-08-20T20:37:00.000-07:00

COMPOSERS

Whatever is broken will remain so.

The universe does not know when

We decide things like broken. It

Just continues to move without regard to

Names and degrees of importance. All is

Equal here. This time I am equal to you.

I will tell you what to be concerned with

When the night makes that noise it does,

Telling us we have no right to be here.

Sparks fill the atmosphere and join our

Language as words of compassion or damnation.

There is no regard for the fact that we might

Have family or that we might be in love with

Someone who is quite important to us. No

Rules here my friends.. The herds of migration

Have no trouble flattening the trails toward

Water or a safe harbor away from the teeth

The sea brings to our voyages there. You

Can place bets but chances are I will have

Sex with those you love and you will have

Sex with those that I love and when migration

Is over we will have no memory at all. Everything

will be the change. Everything will be old again.

We will have no memory except that we once

Could dance. There are sounds, of course.

The great composers play with our libidos

As with flutes or double reed bassoons. We

Will delight at the tickling the tongue makes

Across the reeds. We will think each note

Is special, is ours alone. It is not. The great

Symphony moves into our loins and our minds.

We are lucky if we can remember who wrote

The theme. The memory for music is always

The most difficult to posses.

We will always salute you.

2011-08-11T11:43:00.000-07:00

I've got some Maxfield Parrish illustrations I've re-posted from The Golden Age of Comics as a couple of other images as well. hope you enjoy them.

Medusa's Kitchen has been publishing a poetic conversation that Taylor Graham, Katy Brown and I are having on a variety of subjects. go to medusa'skitchen.blogspot.com to see it. They have also been publishing some of my photos.

Here is one of my poems. Medusa published it some time ago.

A KIND OF SINGING

The light beginning to crackle and glow

Around the buildings on the horizon.

In traveling through this place

We have no idea why such a phenomena

Should occur. It’s rather like a

Small child being born and immediately

Becoming recognized as a great king.

What are the chances of such a thing?

The evening scoots down the low hills

As if it were another child, on a slide,

Being called to dinner just as he

Finally gains his spot at the top.

What to do? Come home now?

Sit down, press one’s legs into the

Sides of the slide and take as much

Time as possible to descend to the ground.

Everyone will understand somehow.

When we reach the bottom of the hill,

The entire landscape looks embossed;

A story book cover one could run ones

Hand over and still feel the real worth

The story has to hold. No one has

Visited this place below the hill

For so long we have forgotten the songs

That used to be sung about it.

We believe we are making up a new song.

TORNADOES

2011-07-09T08:58:00.000-07:00

THE TORNADO

from The Song of the Sky by Guy Murchie Jr. being an excerpt from pages 143-157 from the first edition of his book published in 1954 by The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Ma.

Devastating as is the hurricane in its vast strength, however, it is far behind the tiny tornado in concentrated velocity. Named from the Latin tornare, “to turn”, and variously described by Pliny the Elder, Seneca, and Lucretius, this frenzied whirlwind plays hornet to the hurricane’s elephant. It has its corresponding local names from the tourbillomn of France to the piao of China, its waterspout variants from the dancing trompa of the black Sea to the descriptive skypompe of the baltic.

While the hurricane, cutting a swath two or three hundred miles wide and sometimes ten thousand miles long during its fortnight to a month of rampage, blows with a velocity known to have exceeded 200 m.p.h. at its highest fury, the little tornado’s path is rarely as much as half a mile wide, usually less than a couple of dozen miles long, and it seldom outlives the hour. Yet the air whizzing around the tornado’s vacuous center moves with a speed estimated at from 200 to 800 m.p.h. More accurate determination of tornado velocity has not been made at this writing, for the good reason that on rare occasions when anemometers have happened to be in its path, they have been wrecked by the wind itself-committing a kind of meteorological suicide.

Like the hurricane, the tornado is conceived in heat and turmoil. It may appear in almost any country, and has been reported in every one of the United States. statistically, the most like;y place in the world to meet one is in eastern Kansas late in the afternoon of a sultry day around the end of May, and thye are fairly common any place east of the Rocky mountains, where the cold dry winds from the north or west meet the warm moist airs from the Gulf.

Thunderstorm weather is ideal for tornado breeding, with violent heat rivers bearing the air upward like a giant drain in reverse, the black thunderheads serving as the inverted bottom of the tropospheric bathtub out of which the air is being sucked aloft in a swirling effusion.

The dynamics of it is not really so simple, however, and W. J. Humphreys, authority on physics of the air, has listed “twenty-six conditions normally associated wit the occurrence of tornadoes.” Although there is always open season on interpretation of tornado statistics, the checking of which in the field is usually as haphazard as it is hair-raising, meteorologists are largely agreed on the basic nature of the wind gone wild.

In general terms, the consider the tornado as a small focal point in a large turbulence- and eddy stirred by the clash and mixing of two opposite kinds of air: (1) warm, buoyant, expanded, humid air that tries to rise up from the lower levels and (2) cool, heavy, dry air that prefers to sink down from the shifting heights. When a polar air mass is drifting along from the northwest, for instance, tornadoes sometimes appear from fifty to a hundred miles ahead of it while the lower wind is still blowing warmly from the southwest, because the over-reaching “upper cold front” of advance dry air creates top-heaviness, manifesting itself usually as a squall line of thunderstorms where the hot lower air tries to chimney its way up through the unstable roof-where any persistent updraft may be caught (like the baby hurricane) between conflicting winds and set whirling before the lash law of angular momentum.

Of course this is by no means the only birthway of the tornado, which can sprout directly from a giant typhoon or grow out of the updraft of a man-made fire. The hot black smoke from a burning oil field in California in 1923 generated ‘hundreds of whirlwinds, one of which was violent enough to kill two people and wreck a house,” and during that same year in japan four full-fledged tornadoes were reported to have emerged like phoenixes out of the fires that followed the great Tokyo earthquake on September first.

While small in horizontal area as compared to a hurricane, the tornado can be just as tall, and the great twister that smashed through Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1953 was fourteen miles high at the cirrus top of its overriding thunderhead. The relationship between these two classic forms of cyclonic wind is shown more particularly by the fact that the tornado has an eye at its center also, and some meteorologists think there is a proportionate downdraft of relatively warm air in the eye’s middle (although none has yet aspired to prove it. In a few cases cool-headed observers have noticed the momentary calm and the clear air inside a large tornado eye (sometimes more than a mile in diameter), and several have remarked on the chill (not entirely psychological) felt during its passing. The coolth at the base of the vortex seems to be a generally accepted fact and is in accord with the well-known cooling effect of expansion (as in air released from a tire). Outside the vacuous vortex, conversely, the air is denser, warmer and there has been observed a surrounding downdraft that spirals inward near the ground just as definitely as the ferocious updraft spirals outward into the sky, like two forming, counterbalancing parts of an integral circulation as in the hurricane, in hot and cold currents of the sea, even as in the two-way flow of our human blood.

A glider pilot flying near a huge dust devil over a desert recently proved this to his own satisfaction, clocking the pouter downdraft at 1800 feet a minute, the air getting warmer (by adiabatic compression) as it descended. Near the ground a few hundred feet outside another whirlwind some ardent weather scout felt “hot puffs” of air moving inward toward the twister and measured them with his pocket thermometer at “about 20 degrees F. warmer than the prevailing air.

That sort of evidence is almost all that Science has to go on with tornadoes, but by putting together hundreds of hits into the meteorological mosaic, the weathermen have learned a good part of the over-all picture. They know that tornadoes need not be expected until there are signs of thunder about, for the pendant funnel always hangs down from a towering cumulo-nimbus cloud-bank, often one showing turbulence all over its under surface in the form of drooping eddy pouched called mammatus because they resemble breasts. but it is not the funnel itself that is to be feared. Rather it is the fast wind whirling around its base, the tornado’s outer collar that is usually black with raised dust and in which debris is continuously being sucked aloft, then inevitably hurled outward again in a wild fountain of nigritude.

So powerful is the terrific updraft that it has been known to lift tons of steel in its overwhelming spiral that at times must develop a vertical velocity of several hundred miles an hour! Although a tornado’s base is normally dragged along behind its more dynamic top, like a vacuum-cleaner hose behind its motor, Meteorologist Edward M. Brooks of St. Louis University cites one over eager twister that somehow ran ahead of its thundercloud, then immediately created a new one that shot up to “35,000 feet in one minute.”

Sometimes the dark funnel grows so fat in its upper turbination it has been described as balloon-shaped. Sometimes it is thicker at the bottom than the top, like a tree, or it may become wasp-waisted with the narrowest part halfway up the trunk, a virago in pirouette. At other times it dwindles to a snakelike thinness, now black as tar, now fading into ghostlike transparency.

There is something weird about an invisible tornado descending upon a town, like the unseen angel of death, but exactly that has been known to happen when the vortex was passing through unusually dry air- too dry for condensation. sometimes the clouds above the tornado show a faint greenish or yellowish reflection from the earth, and when the funnel is well of the ground it usually remains a steamy gray, now and then turning almost as pale as milk. On rare occasions, in winter, it may dip low and become suddenly pure white, as the time a tornado passed over a snow field on the east slope of the Wasatch Mountains in plain sight of Salt Lake City airport, sucking tones of snow up into its maw like some kind of rotary snowplow, releasing an intense miniature blizzard in its wake.

Most witnesses of tornadoes do not remember them as having any particular smell other than that of the raised dust, yet a few reliable and sensitive observers have reported a distinct odor or sulphur and ozone-perhaps the chemical consequences of vacuous air and electrical discharge. Certainly tornadoes are associated with a special lightning of very delicate lace-like texture and of almost continuous flickering frequency. Pilots flying blind through thunderstorms have been known to take evasive action after recognizing this tornadic trademark, usually climbing above 15,000 feet to avoid the risk of running into a hidden vortex at its level of greatest frenzy.

What can happen in a blind collision between and airliner and a tornado ambushed in a cloud is suggested by the fate of the DC-6 that is thought to have run into a ‘stormspout” off mobile, Alabama, on February 14, 1953. All that is definitely known is that the bog plane was suddenly and mysteriously thrown out of control and spun or dove into the gulf, killing all forty-six persons aboard.

As to the sound of a tornado, the memories of all witnesses are usually quite definite. It has the roar of a thousand trains passing in the night. If more distant, the prolonged whine of a swarm of bees. Even from twenty-five miles away, the persistent bellow of a mature tornado has been noticed, and for as long as an hour before the storm’s arrival, keen ears have warned a population of the danger. The final roar is frequently augmented by nearly continuous thunder and often as not by a rattling obbligato of large hail mixed with shingles, nails, and assorted splintering boards.

The average recorded duration of the tornado’s passage over one spot is but 15 seconds, and its average total endurance along the ground about eight minutes. But many tornadoes are far from average. One midwestern twister was recorded as dawdling along in a continuous path for “seven hours.” Although the average swath cut by tornadoes, according to statistics, is thirteen miles long, this amazing storm started in missouri at noon and meandered eastward across the middle of illinois and southern Indiana, stopping only at sunset close to the Ohio border, having traveled 293 miles, “the longest continuous path of a tornado of which there is any authentic record.” An unusual but not unique feature of this one also was that no funnel of any sort was visible after the first hour, but just “a boiling mass of clouds” in which individual clouds “seemed to roll towards each other and downward, like the meshing of a pair of huge cog wheels,” no doubt sucked inward by the central vortex hidden somewhere in the very low cumulo-nimbus confusion.

In general, tornadoes last their longest over flat open country and travel fairly steadily in a northeasterly direction. Rough terrain, large buildings, or high hills are apt to change their course or bounce them back into the sky, but such wind barriers also have been known to spawn entirely new twisters. You might think that houses on hilltops or windward slopes would be more vulnerable to tornadoes than those in secluded valleys, but statistics do not bear this out. Instead, the record indicates that leeward slopes actually have suffered more destruction than windward ones, and that tornadoes have almost a great propensity for dipping into valleys as an elephant has for groping into peanut bags.

A Kansas whirler on June 5, 1917, after barreling over the wheatfields for thirty-five miles, “swept down the face of a a steep bluff sheltering the town of Elmont and demolished every house but one.” Others frequently have bored deep enough into river beds to suck them completely dry. One extracted all the water from a well thirty-six feet deep.

Tornadoes can be indecisive to the point of uncanniness too, and a few have been known to move in circles, make U-turns, figure-eights, and even stand spinning in one spot for nearly twenty minutes.

The best account of a close look at a tornado I have run across is the account of Will Keller, a Kansas farmer, who told it thus to Alonzo A. justice of the Dodge City Weather Bureau:

On the afternoon of June 22, 1928, between three and four o’clock I noticed an umbrella-shaped cloud in the west and southwest and from its appearance suspected there was a tornado in it. The air had that peculiar oppressiveness which nearly always precedes a tornado.

I saw at once my suspicions were correct. Hanging from the greenish black base of the cloud were three tornadoes. One was perilously near and apparently headed directly for my place. I lost no time hurrying with my family to our cyclone cellar.

The family had entered the cellar and I was in the doorway just about to enter and close the door when i decided I would take a last look at the approaching cloud. I have seen a number of these and did not lose my head, though the approaching tornado was an impressive sight.

The surrounding country is level and there was nothing to obscure the view. There was little or no rain falling from the cloud.

Two of the tornadoes were some distance away and looked like great ropes dangling from the parent cloud, but the one nearest was shaped more like a funnel, with ragged clouds surrounding it. It appeared larger than the others and occupied the central position, with he great cumulus dome directly over it.

Steadily the cloud came on, the end gradually rising above the ground. I probably stood there only a few seconds, but was so impressed with the sight it seemed like a long time. At last the great shaggy end of the funnel hung directly overhead. Everything was as still as death. There was a strong, gassy odor, and it seemed as though I could not breathe. There was a screaming, hissing sound coming directly from the end of the funnel. I looked up, and to my astonishment I saw right into the heart of the tornado. There was a circular opening in the center of the funnel, about fifty to one hundred feet in diameter and extending straight upward for a distance of at least half a mile, as best I could judge under the circumstances. the walls of this opening were rotating clouds and the whole was brilliantly lighted with constant flashes of lightening, which zig-zagged from side to side. Had it not been for the lightning, I could not have seen the opening, or any distance into it.

Around the rim of the great vortex small tornadoes were constantly forming and breaking away. These looked like tails as they writhed their way around the funnel. It was these that made the hissing sound. I noticed the rotation of the great whirl was anti-clockwise, but some of the small twisters rotated clockwise. The opening was entirely hollow, except for something I could not exactly make out but suppose it was a detached wind cloud (perhaps the tornadic counterpart of the hurricane’s eyelid.) This thing kept moving up and down. The tornado was not traveling at great speed. I had plenty of time to get a good view of the whole thing, inside and out.

Although the spinning speed of the vortex in such a storm has never been measured, plenty of indirect evidence has accumulated: the3 burnt look of trees stripped bare in the tornado’s wake, the imbedding of grass stems in wooden fence posts, even a case of a bean discovered “one inch deep in an egg without having cracked the shell.” The element of personal whimsy is of course proverbial with tornadoes, in the way they will pick out a one house yet leave the next untouched; or whisk one member of a family into the sky like magic; perhaps carry a cupboard full of crockery for a quarter of a mile and set it down without breaking a dish.

One twister whooshed a horse into the air among debris, horse flies, horse shoes and barn, allowing the terrified animal to alight unharmed half a mile distant. In another case a woman milking a cow saw the cow swept into a black funnel, leaving her sitting with a pail - but no cow. At Harleyville, Kansas, a whirler passing close to a farmhouse sucked the bedding and mattress from under a sleeping boy without so much as giving him a scratch. Another blew a lighted kerosene lamp for several hundred yards, leaving it still burning and undamaged though with a smoky chimney.

An exceptional account of tornadic violence as viewed from the sky is the report of an Air Force lieutenant who happened to be flying over Waco, Texas, when that city of 90,000 people was struck on May 11, 1953. As the twister bore down down Main Street, he saw plate-glass windows on both sides burst outward into the street in progressive waves, then opposing brick walls met each other as they crashed on top of the lanes of slow-moving cars, roofs falling into the wall-less interiors of the stores. A theater and a six-story furniture mart burst at the seams like slow bombs, both immediately collapsing into twisted heaps of wreckage.

The explosive tendency of an enclosed building when enveloped in a tornado vortex is obviously the result of the sudden decrease in pressure outside the building relative to its normal interior atmosphere of about fifteen pounds per square inch. When the barometer drops to twenty-three inches, as was unofficially recorded for the U>S: Weather Bureau in the eye of a tornado at Minneapolis on August 20, 1904, the pressure inside a closed house suddenly finds itself almost four pounds per square inch higher than outside. That means that the force of a ton is immediately exerted against every section of wall two feet square, several tons upon an average window, and nearly a thousand tons throughout the typical small house.

One of the statistics about tornado damage that used to puzzle the pious was the fact that so many churches were completely blasted, while the more numerous barrooms and taverns rarely suffered even minor damage. Only recently have church dignitaries come to realize the meteorological importance of the swinging door as a safety valve of pressure distribution. In the midwest, I hear, a few of the more enlightened ministers, sensing the moral of this tornadic bias for Bacchus, are taking to opening up their churches to the air and incidentally to the people all week long, day and night. This kind of church, to my weather eye, is likely to live longer not only in the secular gales but in some of the even less measurable flowings of the human heart.

If explosive air pressures can blow up buildings, of course, the same principle must apply proportionally to air and gas encased in living bodies, and it is known that persons killed by tornadoes are sometimes so swollen they look “like pigs” just after the passage of the vortex. This naturally applies to farm animals as well, and it is a common sight to see chickens not only blown up but plucked clean by a tornado. The fact that their feathers come off so readily even when the bird is unharmed had led some meteorologists to speculate that the air sealed into the feather quills actually explodes under the sudden provocation of the vacuum.

How significant the whirlwind is in the world, is hard to comprehend without checking its incidence in places near and far, looking at its lesser cousins, even perhaps glancing back from the perspective of time. Did you know that Washington D.C., has seen four tornadoes, all since Calvin Coolidge took the presidential oath? And that a dozen American cities have been struck at least five times each: Chicago, Cincinnati, Fort Smith, Indianapolis, little rock, Minneapolis, Oklahoma city, New Orleans, St. Louis, Terre Haute, Topeka, and Wichita?

England has had its share of tornadoes too, including one that romped through the very heart of London from Victoria Station to Euston on October 26, 1928, hurling chimney pots and cornices into the streets by the hundred. Others have struck such unlikely places as Moscow, Naples, Naples, Bourges, Delhi, the outskirts of of Tienstsin, Bermuda, many parts of Australia, even the Fiji Islands.

Although a good deal has been discovered recently about tornadoes, man has not learned how to outwit them. In fact their nature seems to have the curious effect of making them increasingly dangerous and destructive as populations grow. This seems to be because cities are a tornado’s natural prey, and effective warning systems very difficult to organize. People who would telephone an alarm of fire forgot to give the most important (and more unselfish) alarm of tornado, and the storm wreaks its worst havoc in cities where anyone caught in the streets is in mortal danger of being buried under flying debris. This is in striking contrast with hurricanes, which are mainly maritime, are progressively being disarmed through systems of warnings several days ahead (including a new balloon that automatically floats in a hurricane’s eye and continuously broadcasts its position), and which in any case seldom develop the wind force for collapsing buildings more substantial than cheap hangers, barns, and cottages.

The dust devil can be distinguished from the tornado mainly by its smaller size and the fact that it is dancing upon the earth rather than hanging from a cloud. To a meteorologist it is the trunk without the elephant.

Nonetheless, these small vortexes of sand are a common sight on the desert, and derive their power from updrafts of sun-baked air caught in natural eddies of the wind. Their average height has been estimated as 600 feet, maximum diameter about 100 feet, and they seldom last an hour. The biggest one on record was seen on the Egyptian desert near Cairo. It stood a mile high, and spun along for five and a half hours, obeying the general rule of thumb that a dust devil will stay alive as many hours as it has thousands of feet in altitude.

The centrifugal action of the devil’s vortex has the interesting effect of keeping the larger grains of dust or sand to the outside, making a gradation of progressively smaller particles toward the center where there is a suggestion of an eye of calmness, a fitful navel of cousinship with all the greater vortex storms of the world. Although the c updraft has been conservatively estimated to exceed thirty miles an hour vertically, the circumferential swirl must sometimes attain several times that speed in horizontal component. And the spinning devil has a curious predilection for higher ground - so much so that it will work its way uphill even if this means bucking a 3 m.p.h. prevailing down-slope breeze.

When the surrounding wind fields are turbulent, dust devils often contort themselves into curves of brown wind dervishes that lay nearly horizontal, steamrolling across the Mexican desert, now bounding over the hillocks, now tilting vertically to rise a thousand feet, now leaning downward again before the dry hot wind.

It is rare for a dust devil to grow into a real tornado, but it has been known to happen “in special cases” (according to Edward N. Brooks), and this sun-heated desert vortex still holds its reputation for mystery dating from ancient times.

The most epic whirlwind in history, I believe, was the one that miraculously arose during Mohammed’s first battle in the little valley of Badr near Medina in A.D. 624. Awakening from a brief spiritual trance just at the critical turn of the fighting, mohammed impulsively picked up a handful of dirt and flung it toward his enemies with a holy curse. Whether or not he intended literal fulfillment of the ancient prophecy that he who sows the wind shall reap the whirlwind, he mounted a horse and charged like a madman into the midst of the fray, followed by a very small dust devil that had curiously sprung to life from his cast handful of earth. As the wrathful prophet dashed forward it is said that the whirling spiral of dust behind him grew rapidly in size and speed until it drew abreast of Mohammed and swept with full fury into the masses of Koreishite swordsmen opposing him. In a few minutes the enemy were so blinded and confused by the unexpected storm that most of them turned in headlong retreat and the first Moslem victory was assured.

Waterspouts are basically similar to tornadoes and dust devils yet have a cleaner, smoother look because of the dearth of dust at sea and the seascape’s relative lack of friction. They also depend proportionately more on humidity for power, less on heat.

The commonest kind are what weather men call “storm spouts” or miniature tornadoes which, like all tornadoes, have their roots in cumulo-nimbus clouds. They often come in flocks. One ship saw thirty big ones in one day. The Gulf knows many of them in summer and they appear on the Great Lakes and most of the tropic and not-too-temperate seas. They often turn out when the sky is sultry and sullen, when there may be a bluish haze and surface suggestions of the moonier air currents. Suddenly a dark elephantine cloud with a hanging trunk in noticed, usually lengthening rapidly from the stubby tornadic funnel to the scrawnier, snake-like stem of the typical waterspout. As the winds carry it along, the thin whirling stalk may bow forward ahead of the cloud, dragging its spinning base after it willy-nilly, like a celestial vine goddess borne by her torso.

In most cases you can look right through the transparent bole of the vortex as it dips down to draw up what superheated air and spray it can collect just over the water. But it has enough condensed moisture to be not invisible, and occasionally even appears with an outer cylinder of falling mist descending around it like a fountain after being lifted in the inner whirl.

Although the amount of suction, of inward and upward flow, is not so great in a full, sea-going waterspout, the basic tornado nature of this wind is obvious from the fact that in many cases it starts as a land whirler, and may change from a waterspout to a tornado and back several times in crossing isthmuses, gulfs, capes, and straits, impartially demolishing houses one minute and boats the next. Few of them last long enough in one spot to be reliably measured, but a spout destined for particular renown happened to appear one day in August 1896 between Marta’s Vineyard and the Massachusetts mainland just as summer boarders were relaxing from lunch. As there were many trained observers on hand and the spectacle lasted thirty-five minutes, it became perhaps the best photographed and documented waterspout in history. It turned out to be “3600 feet high, 840 ft. in diameter at the top, 140 ft. in the middle, 240 ft. at the base.” Its “cascade” was “420 ft. high” and showered spray outward “to a diameter of 720 ft.”

The maritime equivalent of the dust devil is the “fair-weather waterspout,” which depends on a spontaneous local updraft of hot air over water strong enough to develop a durable and recognizable vortex - something that does not happen easily. however, in tropical sultry seas these spray devils, as they might be called, have been known to appear in impressive numbers - dancing over the shining waves like the colts of Erichthonios, lifting a salty mist many hundreds of feet into the sky, often assuming the forms of great dragons of the nether rainbow, or birds with fluttering winds. I read of one seen off the coast of New South Wales which became “very long, swaying and coiling like a serpent,” until “all at once it made a complete coil and vanished.”

The smaller ones, like picture - book houris, more fascinating than dangerous, and I have not known any modern ocean ship to suffer serious damage in encountering them - though flags have been torn, barrels and light gear whipped around, and fresh spray lashed against the captain’s door (indicating most water in a waterspout is condensed aloft rather than picked up below).

2011-07-01T10:57:00.000-07:00

Medusa's Kitchen published this some time ago. I hope you enjoy it.

I'm still working on the Tornado section of Guy Murchie's Song of The Sky. It will be posted soon. It is worth the wait.

THE CLOTHING OF THE MORNING

The room seems very tiny

As if it could not contain

such a deep sorrow so easily.

The hole extends through the floor

With drifts of dull colored lights

Waiting around the edges of the sore.

We can’t wait any longer. We have

Seen the loved ones taken away

Into the night and have chased

After them as far as this room.

We will find a way to enter the room.

We have already begun to learn

The speech of the guardians at the doors.

One of them asked if we have keys,

Another if we knew where the drinking

Liquid was kept. We told them yes

And led them to the desert edge.

Three of us entered the room

At that time. We could hear

The weeping. We must trust

That everyone is telling the truth.

And singing. Singing. And I am

Singing and I was wearing that same

Clothing the morning wears when

It has something to show to us

That is beyond compare and we

Know it. We wish to repeat

It each time we wear these things.

Having coffee near the dooryard

The moss-covered skull so green,

So beautiful, holding the whitest

Pearl in its teeth like the truth.

We can walk here once again. Messages

From flights of geese sent to the seasons.

We climb the little hill just near

The dingle and recognize everything.

So perfect is the singing we are

Able to invent new words against it.

Some illustrations and some photos I took this week

2011-06-19T09:20:00.000-07:00

WIND, SAND AND STARS

2011-06-12T17:39:00.000-07:00

Antoine de Saint-Exupery, the man who wrote The Little Prince disappeared over the Mediterranean flying with his air squadron in 1944 a year after writing that book The following is an excerpt from his book Wind, Sand and Stars.

Thus, when Mermoz first crossed the South Atlantic in a hydroplane, as day way dying he ran foul of the Black Hole region, off Africa. Straight ahead of him were the tails of tornadoes rising minute by minute gradually higher, rising as a wall is built; and then the night came down upon these preliminaries and swallowed them up; and when, an hour later, he slipped under the clouds, he came out into a fantastic kingdom.

Great black waterspouts had reared themselves seemingly in the immobility of temple pillars. Swollen at their tops, they were supporting the squat and lowering arch of the tempest, but through the rifts in the arch there fell slabs of light and the full moon sent her radiant beams between the pillars down upon the frozen tiles of the sea. Through these uninhabited ruins Mermoz made his way, gliding slantwise from one channel of light to the next, circling round those giant pillars in which there must have rumbled the upsurge of the sea, flying for four hours through these corridors of moonlight toward the exit from the temple. And this spectacle was so overwhelming that only after he had got through the Black hole did Mermoz awaken to the fact that he had not been afraid.

ALLISON FERRINI

2011-05-27T09:21:00.000-07:00

Photos by D.R. Wagner

Allison is a student of mine in my poetry by design class at UCD. I assigned her to write a poem in the style of Wallace Stevens. She chose his 13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird as her model. What she submitted follows. I found it to be most excellent work.

Allison Ferrini

27 names for tears

In the style of Wallace Stevens

Tears are the dew

that is left on the heart in the morning

One two three tears

fell like diamonds

as cold

as clear

as valuable

“The important thing”

my mother told me

“is to pine beautifully”

She had an amaryllis

Kept it in a pot on the windowsill

And would sit near it

And cry

Water her garden with tears

And one day the flower died

“Too much salt”

And that night

So did she

If there are over 6 billion people worldwide

And one in seven cried yesterday

And one in three cried this month

What are the odds

That one chosen at random

Is drinking grief honey at this very minute?

Horses don’t cry

She said

They have no reason to

He cried when he got punched on the playground

And when he tripped, and the asphalt bit his knee

He cried when he burnt his hand stealing fresh-baked cookies

But those were outside hurts

When his father moved away

He only cried on the inside

Liquid memories fell from her eyes

Pearls are mermaid’s tears

The alien had spent too long on earth

It had assimilated

“I’m leaking!” it burbled

As tears ran down its smooth face

10.

There was a drought

In a kingdom far far away

And they locked the princess up

Until her tears ran

Cool, clear, sparkling

And the people were happy

11.

If a tear lands on a frog

It will turn into a melancholy prince

But with a kiss

He will be joyful and loving and kind

So be careful

12.

It used to be that salt was expensive. People were happy then, and simple.

Then there was a time when it was kept in plastic shakers on all the tables and we laughed and cried freely.

Now, nobody can stand any more salt in their food. There’s too much to be sad about

13.

At the end she collected her tears in a big black pot

Heated it up on the fire

And washed in it

And then she put on her coat

And walked out the door

14.

There is the taste of salty sadness

And the bitter tears of anger

But what I like best is the sweet water squeezed out by laughter

15.

Who needs artificial tears

When we have chairs with only three legs

Really bad hair days

Chunky peanut butter when we like it smooth

Sweaters nobody wants

Who needs artificial tears?

16.

The army uses tear gas

as if bombs weren’t enough

17.

an elf cries in silver tears

a dragon weeps in gold

witches eyes seep out dark red

but angels tears are most impressive

angels cry rainbows

18.

“Don’t cry for me”

She said as she left

“I won’t” laughed he

19.

elephant tears

giraffe tears

zebra tears

crocodile tears

she had the whole menagerie

20.

You could tell she’d been crying

But she blamed it on the rain

21.

Summer kisses

Winter tears

22.

Every time I cry, I funnel it

into a cut glass bottle. Then I hang it on the window

and watch it cast rainbows

all around my room.

Sometimes it makes me feel better.

23.

Eyes shining

She accepted

24.

It’s just allergies he wheezed

High pollen count today

It’s snowing she said

Tell me the truth

25.

She added tears to everything she baked

and always took home first place

26.

The tears came like a flash flood

quick
frightening

destructive

27.

baby’s tears…a tragedy ?

or a flowering shrub?

THE NAMES OF THE WINDS

2011-05-13T13:16:00.000-07:00

THE NAMES OF THE WINDS

This is a very long but beautiful excerpt from Guy Murchie’s SONG OF THE SKY - An exploration of the ocean of air published in 1954 by h

Houghton Mifflin Company in the United States and by The Riverside Press, Cambridge. It is illustrated by the author.

Murchie is one of the most amazing writers of expository prose I have ever read. See his Music of the Spheres and his The Seven Mysteries of Life which is one of the most amazing books I’ve ever read.

pages 130-137.

“Have you heard the wind names of the world, which are among the least known and most beautiful of words? They are truly the heritage of all men for they reflect the tongues of history from ancient Cathy to the slang of the United States Army. Consider the dry khamsin of Egypt, reputed to blow sand unceasingly for fifty days; the westerly datoo of the Straits of Gibraltar; the misty waimea of Hawaii; the cool pontias from the Rhone gorges; the chinook of the dry American plains; the sudden violent williwaw of Alaska and Magellan’s Strait; the biting black buran of Russia; the great typhoon of the China Sea; the whispering matsukaze which shifts through Japanese pine groves; the mild shamal that descends the twin valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates; the warm brickfelder of southern Australia; the playful vento coado which whistles through crannies in the hillside hovels of Portugal;the snorting sonora which crosses Arizona from Mexico to California each summer’ the dainty feh of Shanghai; the whirling tsumuji of Japan; the vindictive rok of Iceland; the refreshing imbat off the blue Mediterranean; the ruthless helm wind of Cumberland which uproots turnips in the field.

Can you feel the rhythm of the wind in human memory? It is a music in the sky and in men’s souls. I cannot refrain from listing them, even at risk of being encyclopedic. It has taken years to snare some of them, and the evidence is that no real wind roster has ever before been assembled.

Faring further into thr sky then, it becomes obvious that the winds of the world are of distant lands. There are the hot, dry winds like the simoom or “burning wind” which are said to wreak great hardship on all living creatures and the moving parts of all machines. Wagon wheels have to be tarred in a desert wind to prevent a fatal brittleness. A wooden flute must be dipped in cool water or oil to prevent it from splitting end to end. And sometimes men are driven to desperation by the parching of their skins, and their throats and noses. Herodotus tells us of the ancient people of Psylli (Tripoli) who became so hysterical when their wells dried up that they actually declared war on the simoom and marched into the Sahara with clashing cymbals and beating drums until they disappeared into a red cloud of whirling sand.

Herewith the desert winds:

Simoom - of Arabia, Syria, and probably Libya

Samiel - Turkish versions of Simoom off Arabian desert

Brickfelder - of Australia

Zonda - of Argentine pampas

Ghibli - dry, southerly wind of the eastern Mediterranean

Leste - warm easterly wind of January in the Medeiras

Black roller - duststorm of the western United States

Naalehu - of Hawaii, blowing from the arid interior areas.

Harmattan - parching wind of Algeria and Morocco

Haboob - of the Sudan, the black roller of the upper Nile

Khamsin - of Egypt

The last mentioned khamsin blows most of the summer from Aden to Cairo carrying so much sand that it is the obvious modern explanation to the ‘darkness that could be felt” of the ninth plague of Egypt.

Then there are the stormy northeasterly winds of passing low pressure:

Koshava - of Yugoslavia, bearing snow from Russia

Steppewind - of Germany blowing from the steppes

Crivetz - of Rumania, like a blizzard

Buran - of Russia, usually with snow

Viuga - of southern Siberia

Myatel - of northern Russia

Purga - of Russia

Seistan - of Iran

Fung chiao hsueh - of China

Bise - dank wind of France (sometimes blowing from the North)

Euroclydon - of the Levant

Tegenwind - of Holland

Hokuto no Kaze - of Japan

Blizzard - of northern America, a howling snowstorm

Nor’easter - of New England, a variant of the blizzard

Suestada - ofthe Rio de la Plata

Southerly burster - of Australia, preceeded by an eerie lull

(these two are southern hemisphere counterparts of northern NE winds)

Of the true north winds are:

Gallego - of Spain

Tramontana - Alpine blast of the Italian east coast

Leung - of the China coast

Pei fung - of China

Erh chi chih fung - of northern China

Hawa shimali - of Arabia

Belat - of Arabian coast in winter

Etesian - of cool summer afternoons in Greece and Levant

Narai - of Japan

Canadian north wind - cold, crusty wind of northern America

The last mentioned wind helped Benedict arnold’s fleet stop the first British invasion from Canada in the American Revolution. this was at the Battle of Valcour Island on Lake Champlain, October 11, 1776, where, by taking a northerly upwind position for his ambush of the superior British fleet, Arnold gained the indispensable advantage.

The non-simoom south winds are fewer but no less fraught with character:

Siffanto - up from the hot heel of Italy

Kona - of Hawaii, sultry and petulant with many varieties

Kai - balmy south wind of China

Hawa janubi - of Arabia

Vandavales - out of Morocco and blowing over Spain

This last isthe gentle breeze which, at the Battle of Trafalger, influenced Nelson to risk attack in two columns instead of the traditional line.

Of plain east and west winds like the helm, the haur, and the datoo, the most famous in history is the east wind that blew at the Siege of Orleans. As joan of Arc on the west bank of the Loire prayed to Saint Catherine to help her men cross on their gun rafts to attack the English fort, it miraculously changed into a west wind. Cried Dunois, in the words of Shaw: “West wind, west wind, west wind. Strumpet: steadfast when you should be wanton, wanton when you should be steadfast...west wind, wanton wind, wilful wind, womanish wind, false wind from over the water, will you never blow again?”

Trade winds cover vast areas, and the best known ones are the northeast trades that extend around most of the earth from the wind equator to the north horse latitudes, while corresponding southeast winds blow trade over the equivalent Capricorn belt. Some special trade winds are:

Eliseos - of Spain

Moncao - of Portugal

Boekifu - of Japan

Maaoi fung - of China

Tung shang fung - of China

Shih ling fung - of China

Of more local type are the treacherous down-blowing or fall winds, warm and cold, of the ice slopes of mountains - particularly the gusty foehn winds of the high Alps, the Rockies, Andes, and the deep fiords of Norway and Greenland which blow savagely down from the lee heights, becoming drier as they warm under the pressure of lower altitude. This family of down-blowing winds, which sometimes move with boiling turbulence and form jets in local valleys, has undoubtedly brought disaster to more unwary fliers crossing high mountain ranges than any other type of wind there is. The foehn has been estimated to throw pressure altimeters into error by as much as 1000 feet on the optimistic side near high peaks, and even though it is a fall wind the effect of tis wave motion has been observed to reach twenty five times the height of the mountains. Fall winds include:

Maloja - plummeting foehn wind in lofty Maloja Pass in Switzerland

Yamo oroshi - foehn of the steep valleys of Japan

Chinook - widespread foehn wind in the lee of the Rockies that in winter warms the sheepherders of Montana

Zonda - foehn of the Andes in Argentina

Papagayos - of Costa Rica

Santa Ana - of southern California

Klod - Balinese wind that blows “downward to the sea”

Reshabar - lusty and black, out of the high Caucasus

Gregale - a Maltese wind down from the Balkan highlands

and these northerly winds which bring cold air masses down from continental plateaus to balmy coasts:

Mistral - down from the Cevennes to the French Mediterranean shore

Bora - the dry, blustery, katabatic wind that cools the Dalmatian coast and freshens Naples before the dawn

Monsoon - off the Tibetan plateau to India in Winter

Tehuantepecer - the mistal of Mexico, down from the central plateau

Sometimes the lesser lee downdrafts are poetically referred to as air falls, jsut as their counterparts to windward are known as air fountains.

Akin to these gravity winds are the squally kind:

Galerna - of the Bay of Biscay

Pampero - of Argentina

Norther - of Texas

Chocolatero - of the Gulf of Mexico

Blaast - of Scotland

Bull’s Eye Squall - off the Cape of Good Hope

Kawaihae - of Hawaii

Sumatra - westerly squall of the Indies

Vinds-gnyr - ancient blustery wind of Iceland

Reffoli - 100 m.p.h. gusts associated with the bora of the Adriatic

Naf Hat - blast of Arabia

Wisper - of the Rhine, attaining great strength in narrow valleys

Briza Carabinera - of Spain

Om - of Canton

Line Squall - grumbling frontal wind of the United States

Tapayagua - of western Central America

Kwat - of Amoy

Chubasco - thunderous wind of Pacific Mexico

Williwaw - of Alaska and Magellan’s Strait which sometimes puffs for only a few seconds at a time

The sea breeze has several poetic names, particularly on the Mediterranean coasts:

Imbat - refreshing North African shores

Datoo - blowing from the west across Gibraltar

Vento de baixo - of Portugal

Solano - of Spain

Levanter - blowing over the Balearic Isles from the east

Ponente - westerly Italian breeze

Libeccio - southwesterly wind also of Italy and, like the Ponete, mentioned by Milton in Paradise Lost

In other places it is known by other names:

Monsoon - of summer in India

Kadja - of Bali, blowing, “upwards to the mountains”

The Doctor - of English-speaking shores

Kaus - of the Persian Gulf

Kapalilua - of Hawaii

And there are the very gentle breezes:

Feh - of shanghai

Kohilo - of Hawaii

Flakt - of Sweden

Creithleag - of Ireland

Waff - of Scotland

Aura - breath of dawn in ancient days

Soyo kaze - of Japan

Vyeterok - of Russia

Sveszhest - of Russia

Ch’ing fung - of China

Sz - first faint breeze of the chinese autumn

Cat’s paw - which barely ripples mill ponds in America

Thalwind - of german valleys

Flauwewind - of Holland

Nasim - of Arabia

Vind-blaer - of Icelandic sagas

Chwa - of Wales

I tein tien fung - a sigh in the sky of China

In contrast the mightiest of winds, the great West Indian hurricane (from the Taino word “huracan” or “evil spirit”) dominates the Caribbean as the typhoon (from “ty fung” “great wind”) the China Seas. But this elephant among the winds has many names for his many haunts, among them:

Mauritius hurricane, or cyclone - of the Indian Ocean

Baguio - of the Philippines

Reppu - of Japan

Willy-Willy - of the Timor Sea descending into north Australia

Asifa-t - of Arabia

Of his lesser cousins, the high gales, there remain:

Orkan - of norway

Landlash - of Scotland

Doinionn - “wild weather” of Ireland

Colla - of the Philippines

Frisk vind - of Sweden

Ventania - of Portugal

Elephanta - of the Malabar coast

Bofu - of Japan

Yuh - of Shanghai

Kohala - of Hawaii

Most of the true tropical hurricanes are born mysteriously and unattended in the giddy heat of the doldrums. Little is definitely yet proven about the dynamics of their origin. But their initial power is widely conjectured to come from a rising vortex of heat over water that “must be at least 82 degrees F.” and surrounded by a certain amount of atmospheric instability.

Guy Murchie, Two poems and some photos I took

2011-05-12T05:41:00.000-07:00

Right now I'm working on preparing a long excerpt form Guy Murchie's book SONG OF THE SKY. This is a very long but beautiful excerpt from Guy Murchie’s SONG OF THE SKY - An exploration of the ocean of air published in 1954 by houghton Mifflin Company in the United States and by The Riverside Press, Cambridge. It is illustrated by the author.

Murchie is one of the most amazing writers of expository prose I have ever read. I hope to have it done by the weekend. Meanwhile here are a couple of poems first published in Medusa's Kitchen earlier this year.

THE SPARKLING DEVICE

That spills over the edge
Of the world as we imagine
Water or song made carnate;
Rippling with flesh and somehow
Telling tales the while. It is all
Discovery and the opening of the field.

Once again, decades later and still
Chanting Duncan’s admonition,
“There is no greater wrong than
To force the song,” a flock of
Yellow birds through dappled forest
Light, twitting and a flash of wings.

“Oh we have seen him there,” we swear.
“We have and leave off from our task.”
I stand and stare even further
Into the forest knowing that we do not
Know what lies there and knowing that
We must go anyway and find that
Water we imagined towering like a
Pillar and astounding the very stars
With its poses and quick stances
Saying our name and asking us to watch it churn.

____________________

THE EARTH FORGETTING

We watched the earth forgetting.
There were animals no longer seen,
Gems so brilliant they could create
Silence in the mouths of great kings,
The humming across Summer of insect
Joy, drifting their song above flowers
No longer seen in the draperies
Gathered by the seasons. Whose
Smile was that? and it is gone
Down the street, not part of
Memory at all, a flash, then nothing.

The music of a piano and a concertina
Wrapped in late evening and dressed in
Sharps and flats has gone dancing.
It will not come back. Perhaps
It will be mined from a lost manuscript
Far from now and be seen at eleven o’clock,
But for now, the earth has forgotten.

It is busy counting waves against a thousand
Shores, finding them unspeakably beautiful.
It watches the moonlight on wheat fields
Ready for harvest beneath a full moon
Wondering what color they are, how it
Might be called, if at all. There is
Always more. It forgets the leaves of
A thousand trees and waits for us to
Notice they no longer have names.

Our families stretch their blood lines,
Their nets of living and dead upon the
Days, one upon one and suddenly one
Is forgotten, then two, then an uncle
Who was last remembered by a niece
Many years ago because he offered her a
Lovely glass he had found in a small
Store in the midwest. “I believe that store
Is no longer there. Perhaps you will
Like this glass. Look, it catches the sun
As if it being careful of the light.”

For now we will sit on the steps just
Outside the house and allow the moments
To come down around us without purpose
So we might better understand the earth,
Her strange habits, her long, long thoughts.

_________

I Wonder Why There Are People

2011-05-02T07:13:00.000-07:00

LITANY

There is a litany of the names of the saints,
Where we are unable to recall
The names of the saints.
Time after time we
Guess at them. None of them
Seem to work
Again and again we say
Names. They are always wrong.
They are, instead, the names of friends,
Of relatives, some long departed, others
Half-remembered. Their names roll
Off the tongue, easy as the phrase “pray for us.”

Like coming downstairs in the morning and
Asking if the coffee is ready yet. A simple request only.
The saints gather in the corners of the house.
Their voices full of praise, the names of all
The angels upon their lips, as if angels had memory.

Over and over again, we say these
Names.
The days pass.
We grow older.
We change our appearance
Time and time again.
Finally, no one recognizes us
Any longer.
We reside in photographs.
Our children say our names
A few more times.
We know what the saints know, implicitly.

_______________I WONDER WHY THERE ARE PEOPLE

The stars are in a hurry. The sky winds
Around them and tells the moon a slick
Story about how they used to have to explain
Themselves every morning when the night
Folded itself like a handkerchief and went back
To waiting, white ships struggling at anchor
In a dream.

While we are not terribly thirsty, the water
From the well tasted refreshing, reminding us
Of a lovely room just off the kitchen in a quiet
Cottage, near the edge of a small river, cookies
Were baking in the next room. We watched
The stars. It wasn’t an easy moment.
Nothing was make-believe. It may have been
beautiful but it had teeth that could bring a horse
To the ground had it wanted to.

There was obviously too much to lose here.
Night was arranging its shiny coat again. Leaves
Looked for directions from the wind. The moment
Was not our own, nor was it that of the stars.

This will come to you in dreams. It will seem
So real. You will be able to put on your glasses
And it will still seem real, a massive room of stone
Filled with the world flickering like bats leaving a cave.
We will want to go back. We will want a good bed.
We will want to see our loved ones again.

Let us change our clothes and wash the blood
From our hands, listen to the sleepy sound
The trains make at the far side of the landscape.
Perhaps they will not see us here. Pretend you
Are sleeping. A gentle breeze stirring the leaves.
The wide sweep of the heavens. It is so strange
And wonderful to be alive. Why does no one come here?

The New Book Has Been Published

2011-04-14T18:13:00.000-07:00

RATTLESNAKE PRESS had a 7th birthday party last evening at The Book Collector 1008 24th Street in Sacramento and celebrated the publication of my new book of poetry A LIMITED MEANS OF EXPRESSION. The event was well attended and I did a reading that seemed to go well. The book is available through Rattlesnake Press. Go to rattlesnakepress.blogspot.com and you'll find a listing for the book. The price is $8.00 - way cheap for such a book. Please buy it and support the press and poetry etc. I'm running a photo of the image I made for the cover of the book above.

SPILLING

2011-03-24T12:18:00.000-07:00

This poem is for Saint Therese of Lisieux. the photograph is an actual funeral photograph of Saint Therese .

SPILLING

We were not supposed to compare

The miracles when they occurred.

One was certainly not better than another;

The roses of Juan Diego to those of Theresa

of Lisieux. We were not to crumple at the

Tiniest comment. What of tears anyway?

We should be able to rise up to the very

Top of buildings without moving our legs.

Surely there would be the burning that carries

Us higher and higher to where finally

We could finally become less and less.

So we spill over and flush the earth

With our tears and quiet sorrows.

We will open the serape of Juan Diego

To see the face of the Virgin, we will find

Joy in the smallest things as we watch our

Hearts empty and fill with love like the locks

On a canal, lifting us up or lowering us

To the clear way around all obstacles,

The way singing does or looking into the eyes

of the beloved, the light reflecting, souls dancing.

Relative to the speed of the past

2011-03-24T12:05:00.000-07:00

This is a poem about my mother's twin brother Bob Bellreng. The photograph of Bob was taken by my father Ray Wagner.

RELATIVE TO THE SPEED OF THE PAST

My mother’s twin brother was killed

At Normandy Beach while hanging

A telephone line from a pole. Never

Saw it coming. Came back in the

Late summer. The funeral was at home.

He was a handsome man, young and

Beautiful with a kind voice and a bright

Future. There were so many who did

Not come back. Every small town had

Some kind of board listing their dead sons.

Faster than that his nephews and nieces

Were growing old and laughing at how

They looked in the nineteen sixties, how

Long their hair was, how idealistic they were.

Even younger, their children are showing

Off their new babies and are being fussed

Over by relatives. There is still a war. It

Is much more informal these days. No

Boards with names on them in elementary

Schools. Now there are national monuments

With names on them. One must go to Washington

D.C. or the state capitol to see who these people were.

They still gave the same thing as their relatives,

Their lives. It isn’t legal, or barely so, to show

the boxes of the dead coming home.

The speed of the past is wildly furious.

Soon it will be lost again as it always is.

Soon we will stand in the fields of dead

And not one name will carry us away.

We will know nothing once again, implicitly.

Bach-some images etc.

2011-03-21T08:48:00.000-07:00

The Orchestral Suites by Bach are gems, full of light and so solid. They are irresistible every time.

BACH: ORCHESTRAL SUITES

Here I am compelled to leave you.

I can see the pale violet light

Where the far mountains speak in secret

To the cumulus clouds and bunch

Them together for those afternoons

Where Bach becomes the perfect

Measure for all thought and we can

But follow, traipsing through

His math matrices with our feelings

Out where everyone can see them.

All music without words commands

The altar and demands respect.

Despite great declensions of information

It is simply not accessible.

Forever, make it part of our speech

Keep it under our fingertips

For as long as possible to recreate

At will a partita or a prelude and fugue

Or the incredible joy a conversation

Might have when we discover

Bach in a new and perfectly sensible

Landscape.

Wyeth-Brandwhyn and two poems

2011-03-04T13:36:00.000-08:00

A WINTER SUNSET IN THE SACRAMENTO VALLEY

The day was much too warm

To truly be called a Winter’s

Day. Narcissus were in bloom.

The greening of the fields was overloaded

For the time of year, but there it was.

Evening had loaded itself on moisture,

Banked the clouds into sheets,

Stretched them across a valley landscape

And was pushing the sun down behind

The whole thing in poured golds and

metallic hues that could easily have

Been kept and put aside for

late Spring or early Summer. Five

O’clock was not used to handling

This kind of display at all.

The sky was slightly embarrassed

But would never deny that wealth

Of colors and special fashion

Such a rare gem as this could command.

And so it commanded and looking we obeyed.

BURNING THE STAIRS

There is a low wail coming

Up through my skin. When

I listen in, head close

To the radio I can feel

The pulse, the full pulse,

The pulse, pulse of the electricity

In its circuits. I can smell

The ozone. I can tell

It needs flame. Even the music.

Even the announcers voice,

Lofting and falling, selling stereos

And car tires has the stink

Of flame around it. I wish

For evening, a room far away,

The arc of a great bird

Across the sky, etched air.

The wail will have none of this.

It becomes louder and shrill.

The dial begins flickering.

Its mouth full of flame.

It begins to melt.

I quickly pick it up,

Toss it into the air.

The stairs of the angels catch fire.

The air is filled with burning stairs.

There is no way to get to heaven

Any longer.

The fire storm rages down.

It is like dreaming.

It is like moving clouds

Away with one’s hand.

I stand at the top

Of the stairs and look down,

Someone is listening to a radio

So intently

I believe

They are an animal.

Some more about my new book-some poems-images

2011-02-24T15:34:00.000-08:00

Well, it looks like the middle of April will be the release time for

A Limited Means of Expression, my new (spiralchap) book from Rattlesnake Press in Pollack Pines. I'm currently making corrections and trying to arrange the content. Kathy Keith, the editor, did a nice job already so Im not shirting much information around. Haven't decided on the cover but will by the second week of March.

MEDUSA'S KITCHEN has continued to publish my work and gave me space for three poems and two photos yesterday, which was a surprise and very nice. Seeing it is the only place I currently submit work, I am very pleased that they like the work.

“WHICH STAR DO YOU LIKE THE BEST?
(a poem in many voices)

...Kenneth Patchen

It seemed, at that moment

As if everything that was going

To be said would be of great

Importance, verging on a profound

Discovery, a sudden understanding

Only seen when the night

Reached in the way it did now,

Casting about the rooms for

The shadows it kept under beds,

Behind doors, inside of mouthes

That had seen too much today

And were hobbled knowing so much

Could be possible but no

Way of knowing what it was they knew.

We left through the carved

Door to the portico that ran

Along the side of the house.

Silence held everything in its hand.

This was hard to bear. The soft

Cloth of the year was only dust

Inside a barn turning from red

To gray, unlacing itself to be the night,

Allowing all of that star light to enter

Through shrinking ceiling boards and doors

That no longer quite closed.

“Which star do you like best?”

She opened the night with a gesture.

“All that heat where there is

No atmosphere, a gleaming from

So many stars” She moved her hands

As if she were touching all of them.

“That one.” he said as the night

Doubled their numbers.

“Or that one”, as it did it again.

“How beautiful.” he thought

As he wondered how it was possible

They could not have been here every night

Looking at the stars this way,

Feeling as if all things were forever.

ON LOVE

There is no

Forseeability

For love..

It has its own door.

It names the heart

In whatever language

It chooses. There is no

Defense. We stand

Naked before it and

Are committed upon

And within, it becomes

Like breathing as

Explained by wonder.

New Poetry Book announced + some photos and a poem or two

2011-02-10T12:22:00.000-08:00

Rattlesnake Press in Pollack Pines announced yesterday that they will be publishing a new book of poetry by me this April. The title is A LIMITED MEANS OF EXPRESSION. I think i've used that phrase in a couple of poems. The book will be in two sections on one Angels and one on a lot of other things. i'm hoping we can bind it like I'd like to see it bound and i've asked someone to do a cover. I hope they can.

SLPY HLLW

I have caught and captured

Van Winkle just as he awoke,

Before he realized where he was

Or what had made his body

Remind him of the way it had worked.

I have shown him filmic images;

The Viet Nam war,

Automobiles of the 1939 World’s

Fairs, the moon landing,

Apartied and the meting ice

Caps. The miracle of television.

Go back to sleep Van Winkle.

This is not you waking at all.

It is a lullaby, a small voice

Singing a song to a French Canadian

Child just as the Winter days

Become coldest. A dream as bears

Have dreams, twitching in the limbs,

Devices that will never be believed,

Bowlers on the lawns in high places

Of the moraines of the Laurentians,

Sleep’s room made for birthing legends.

SONG IN THE AIR

Nobody’s riding and it looks like

This. We saw there was a road

But it was totally unforgiving.

It turned over and around like

The night as a snake and the day

As a landscape of bones and tired

eyes staring down to make one

Think that life had a compromise

Hidden somewhere in its freakish

Towers. But there is no one standing.

There is a song. Oh be sure there is a

Song and we sing it like blind men

Not understanding what the sweetness

Of words could be when smoothed

Into a bed. The voice of a lover

Or an owl or a deep pool. It

Becomes hard to recognize

Any of the friends, any of the lovers.

I am showing you my sleeve.

See this heart? It truly is mine.

couple of things and a photo of E.R. Baxter III and D.R. Wagner from last week in Niagara Falls

2011-01-20T14:57:00.000-08:00

I went back to Niagara Falls last week to see my family. Lisa went with me. It was very cold. one day above freezing but very lovely as well. Went out to visit E.R. Baxter III on his farm. Had a lovely afternoon and poked around the farm a bit.

NIGHTINGALES

Summer breaks its face on my arm.

I can’t remember how your mouth

Felt on mine. How your hand was

When I put my lips on your fingertips.

My heart dances on my spine, fooling

Me into believing that love has a name

That sounds like yours but ends before

I can reach pit and touch your hips,

Your lips, it, as they said, trips me

Past the dream house built of pale

Moonlight and forever and a day.

Up among the concordance of moon,

Sun and our loving, bop style in mouth

Jazz explaining to each other from song

To song how wild this thing is, wind,

The keys ripping past; candles made of

Fireflies and mission bells, tearing

Sheets of song into tiny pieces, Oh yes how

And howl, spurl myself dingingly, plutridly

Fornicoulated, intensely exploding in charcoal

Mouth bar-b-que laughing. There is

No further town we can be found in.

Every stop on your skin unveils the

Brisk night, irresponsible, tales told

By the blind about how the hands

Know the name, the name of all the rains,

Their particular voice, their night thoughts,

On sidewalks, opened at last, no streetlights,

No mouth of sing following. I touch

Your crazy traffic and burn acetylene yellow,

Pure green. Aircraft land in the middle of summer.

My skin stretches, explodes and contains all

The mysterious rainbows from which we reconstruct

The language of all the endless nights of our youth.

NEW MATHEMATICS

They are busing everyone

With new ideas to a single

Room. It is huge. They are

Assigned a single letter of the

Alphabet, told to

Explain themselves.

I don’t go I am able only

To speak in numbers.

Some of them are significant.

I recall there used to be

Noises coming from the sun.

I thought it was music.

A single waves breaks in

The collective imagination.

It is so quiet it seems

Ridiculous it could have meaning.

The room of ideas is opened.

It is filled with the sea.

Language floats upon it

Like garbage..

I am asked to explain this in numbers.

These are visual calculations.

They are made with language.

Bok and a couple of Bluebook covers of sailing ships which Iove dearly

2011-01-05T18:26:00.000-08:00

TALKING TO FISH

They do not know what water is.

They think the world is dancing

Constantly. Songs are ecstasy as they

Enter their bodies completely. They do

Not need ears to hear them.

We seldom see them in trees,

But there they are, thousands of them,

Decorations of the Amazon jungle

In flood. Leaves are the souls

Of fish, sculptures of fish

Never previously seen. Here

In the high jungle they become gems,

Tales of the elders. fish.

We used to walk along the edges of the smaller lakes in the summer. The crappie and small perch would rise in the evening and jump at flies or gulp bugs that fell into the water. They would make concentric circles on the surface of the water, soft splashes in the twilight. It was a language. We had no idea what the fish were saying but they were saying. Maybe it was about the heat or the rain coming the next day or what they had seen beneath the surface. All those years later without a word yet so much of blood and its salt, reeds and thin lines trolled through the water, the quiet that came from eyes that never close, from pressure on lateral lines, from talking on and on to fish.

NIGHTINGALES

Summer breaks its face on my arm.

I can’t remember how your mouth

Felt on mine. How your hand was

When I put my lips on your fingertips.

My heart dances on my spine, fooling

Me into believing that love has a name

That sounds like yours but ends before

I can reach pit and touch your hips,

Your lips, it, as they said, trips me

Past the dream house built of pale

Moonlight and forever and a day.

Up among the concordance of moon,

Sun and our loving, bop style in mouth

Jazz explaining to each other from song

To song how wild this thing is, wind,

The keys ripping past; candles made of

Fireflies and mission bells, tearing

Sheets of song into tiny pieces, Oh yes how

And howl, spurl myself dingingly, plutridly

Fornicoulated, intensely exploding in charcoal

Mouth bar-b-que laughing. There is

No further town we can be found in.

Every stop on your skin unveils the

Brisk night, irresponsible, tales told

By the blind about how the hands

Know the name, the name of all the rains,

Their particular voice, their night thoughts,

On sidewalks, opened at last, no streetlights,

No mouth of sing following. I touch

Your crazy traffic and burn acetylene yellow,

Pure green. Aircraft land in the middle of summer.

My skin stretches, explodes and contains all

The mysterious rainbows from which we reconstruct

The language of all the endless nights of our youth.

Nobody has ever asked me to write anything in this blog so I guess I'll wait for awhile. Been thinking of it however.

I would say that it a good place to listen some excellent reporting is by checking out Daniel Alercon on the publishing business in Peru. UCD had him speak at Berkeley recently. Very good stuff.

a short poem I recently re-discovered and 3 of my photos

2010-12-23T09:33:00.000-08:00

ROAMIN’ IN THE GLOAMIN’

Leaves, be feet for the wind.

A passing of silver hands through the streets,

Eyes moving as though on great strings. Leaves.

Soft golden feet of my own age invents itself

Like a journey or the thoughts of a fine wolf.

Oh we don’t even look at the stars.

So many things keep us from watching.

The sounds of voices my little ones,

Listen to them rise.

D.R.'s Spoon

New Year

MEDUSA'S KITCHEN

PENTECOST chapbook pubished

how to pay, u wonder? paypal (to greenpandapress@gmail.com),check/cash (to Green Panda Press 3174 Berkshire Rd., Cleve. Hts.,OH 44118).

Here's the title poem"

THE CREATION OF THE UNIVERSE

MASK MAKERS BIRD after Taylor Graham and 3 photos

Three poems and some images of mine

TRYING TO KEEP THIS ON TRACK- a new poem

Michael Diaz-12th c. Irish work-Harry clarke-etc

Composers-Jolly Roger-Wyeth-Pyle

TORNADOES

Some illustrations and some photos I took this week

WIND, SAND AND STARS

ALLISON FERRINI

THE NAMES OF THE WINDS

Guy Murchie, Two poems and some photos I took

I Wonder Why There Are People

The New Book Has Been Published

SPILLING

Relative to the speed of the past

Bach-some images etc.

Wyeth-Brandwhyn and two poems

Some more about my new book-some poems-images

New Poetry Book announced + some photos and a poem or two

couple of things and a photo of E.R. Baxter III and D.R. Wagner from last week in Niagara Falls

Bok and a couple of Bluebook covers of sailing ships which Iove dearly

a short poem I recently re-discovered and 3 of my photos

how to pay, u wonder? paypal (to greenpandapress@gmail.com),
check/cash (to Green Panda Press 3174 Berkshire Rd., Cleve. Hts.,
OH 44118).