Lake Effect
November Snow
Some meteorologist attributes your arrival to a shifting front, propelled by lake effect. The announcement streams with inches--maybe feet--of anticipation. And now, adrenaline or hope has me preparing a list for your unscheduled call. But you are fickle. How many times have I been left standing at the altar? Perhaps it’s my penitence for not culling the time you gave me.
Tonight, you will come while I am adrift in dreams, stilled and cocooned in heavy blankets. You'll arrive dancing, whirling your powdered skirt and dressing the pines in a petticoat of their own. The branches, like sinners, will reach out for a blessing and the dirty and discarded will be made beautiful by your touch.
I wake when the moon chimes. In deference, dawn bows her head, allowing this frozen Polaroid to slowly materialize through my window. As indigo fades to sapphire and shadows etch to lines, I settle into your arms, comforted by the warmth.
~Annette Smitley
Water in the Inflexible World
In the strict subject of water
Mostly it is blue flowing through cracks.
But it can also be turquoise like the pool at Caesar's Palace.
Or the hard steel grey of winter.
You tell me to write beyond the literal sense
But I am blocked.
My mind is choppy,
A rough sea hitting the break wall of memory.
…
In the end you can sit in the hospital
Day after day
Meditating on the words Hill-Rom,
Watching the IV's drip away,
Knowing that will never be enough
Water to save him.
....
We seek water
Blue like the Pacific Ocean.
Late in the day
The girls come down from Pepperdine to surf.
They are ordinary but made of magic.
Small feet dance up and down the board
As they balance on the edge of a wave
And catch momentum without falling
Into the rip currents that can drag you out to sea.
~Rhonda Rasmussen