By the time I got up there wasn't even much of a drizzle, and shortly after that the sun came out for a while, so I pretty much slept through the whole storm. I'm a bit sad that I missed it. But I did get to see a thin crescent moon hanging over the pine trees this evening. It's already very cold out (just a hair above freezing, in fact) and will get colder. The forecast is now calling for clear sky for four of the next five days, and the next rain is not predicted until next Sunday.
It will remain pretty cold the entire time, which is good news for the Sierra snowpack, which has gotten a decent start. There should be little if any melting at those elevations. If this keeps up for the next three months we should see some higher water levels in the reservoirs by late spring. That would provide a respite from the drought, though not necessarily an end to it. Ending it would require at least three years of decent rain.
But all that is neither there nor here; not yet. Whatever then will be, the moment is this chilly dark with even the slight glimmer of moon gone down below the vague hint of vanished forest whose remnant can barely be seen in starlight. The birds are silent in their shrubby nests, nor can any footfalls of nocturnal beasts be heard above the deep silence left by the rain's departure. I look at the sky which is not yet bare of clouds. My breath hangs in a shaft of light from my window, vanishes, returns with my next exhalation. Vapor counts like a clock and disperses in the darkness— the year winding down, as all do, as all does. What I feel is the cold seeping into my bones and a desire to return indoors, which I do. Goodnight, night.
Sunday Verse
Aunt Julia
by Norman MacCaig
Aunt Julia spoke Gaelic
very loud and very fast.
I could not answer her —
I could not understand her.
She wore men's boots
when she wore any.
— I can see her strong foot,
stained with peat,
paddling with the treadle of the spinningwheel
while her right hand drew yarn
marvellously out of the air.
Hers was the only house
where I've lain at night
in a box bed, listening to
crickets being friendly.
She was buckets
and water flouncing into them.
She was winds pouring wetly
round house-ends.
She was brown eggs, black skirts
and a keeper of threepennybits
in a teapot.
Aunt Julia spoke Gaelic
very loud and very fast.
By the time I had learned
a little, she lay
silenced in the absolute black
of a sandy grave
at Luskentyre.
But I hear her still, welcoming me
with a seagull's voice
across a hundred yards
of peatscrapes and lazybeds
and getting angry, getting angry
with so many questions
unanswered.