Mother Nature Writes and Nanowrimo Ends

Dear Residents,

Tomorrow will be cloudy. Cloudy with rain. Great heavy gray sheets of rain. Rain enough to rehydrate a mummy. There will be flash floods. Jagged gashes will split the sky and fill the air with the single sound of a thousand drums.

You have been whining about lack of rain. You have been forecasting a big year for wildfires.

Tonight, your weather forecaster will consult his doppler and chase his tail around the map in pursuit of flashing colors. He will generously promise sunshine tomorrow. He believes. His machine and he are fun to toy with. He is such a fool, but he should fool with someone else.

Tomorrow will be cloudy with rain and rain.

Love,
Mother Nature


AND Nanowrimo is complete for another year. There'll be hours of editing, reworking and formatting but another novel can't be a bad thing. Well, maybe.

Short Tale of a Long-Haul Trucker

Walking as if the wind blows leeward
he looks into my eyes ‘til the tic comes
blinks into it, a tremor marks his hand.
Tells of long-haul trucking, again,
once the doc approved.
Florida grew too large he says
overfull of Cubans, Haitians and Yankees
Kansas drew him with a lowcost home
before tornadoes turned him out.

He brings up Viet Nam
when it seems that I won’t ask,
makes it sound an afterthought
but I hear his yearn to tell,
thirteen days was all he stayed
less than a short vacation.
Testosterone still high,
he thought it a macho game,
missed a move,
didn’t see the bullet that sniped his neck.

Hair, the rich thick color of honey,
a messy cover on his head,
he strolls with limp and leftside lean
admiring art on my gallery walls
says his rig is parked across the street
says his world needs a pause.


Mist, altered fractal

Nanowrimo, Haiku & a Fractal

mottled hands
veins pushing thin skin
crone's reward

Previously published in Erratica II


Today marks halfway +2 in Nanowrimo and I'm making word progress. This year I won't, unless something shifts, have a novel. My character turned frenetic, leaped into three more plots than she can handle. She may have been influenced by my unease and I may not be able to tie the loose strings into one knot. But there's halfway -2 days to go. Anything can happen.

The windstorm last week put me on the road for a day while I searched for hangouts warm and lighted after the electric and phone disappeared from my place. The neighbor reported fireballs and thoughts of life in a war-torn area took up residence in my head to create a short story, submitted on Wednesday.

Farewell, Joan

Farewell to my writing friend, Joan. She passed away Sunday, leaving a huge empty spot in the world.

Joan, another lady and I were collaborating on a murder mystery. We will try to complete the novel to share with Joan's family and other friends. It won't be easy.

We miss you, Joan!

Once in November

Retrograde Mercury
across the sun
triggers an Ichabod night

my trousers cuff at curling leaves
churned by corkscrew winds
pines try their taproots

a brave star dots the lonely dark
retreats behind boiling wings
sweeping black the sky.


November Fractal created by Sue in Apophysis

Wind Sown

Wind with no name
climbs out of the settling sun
chases blood red smoke
of burning scrub pine,

boils against a sculpted mesa
beyond fallow upturned fields
rubs against sandstone shadows
darkened by the midnight frame.

Pushing against pallid traces
it obscures obstructions
carries ash wrapped seed forward
plants an unstained day.


Flower of Spider, digital photo