Field Notes of Weather: A Winter Poem

Like radio static, the seasons reach for each other’s signals

A fresh poem! I confess I don’t enjoy Novembers so I’m glad it’s done - things turn darker so swiftly, the days get impossibly short, and work, instead of winding down, insists on keeping up an annoying pace. But winter itself, at its heart, I do love. It’s been slow to come here in the American South, so this is a poem somewhat about the slow, reluctant change of seasons.

May your week be full of beauty.

“Unbound”, oil on canvas, Amber Brunsden

Field Notes of Weather

Dismantled cold rehearses the edges of winter. 
Fall, bidden to go, bids itself adieu, but lingers. 
An echo.

The sun writes a field note of sunrise that dances in lichen pools
And then beats a warm retreat.

Like radio static, the seasons reach for each other’s signals; brood,
Then acede. Communiqués cast across skies and through
Deep dirt. Perhaps the turning of the earth’s orb, its repetition
As a long wave refreshing, feels jaded to them. The seasons, cuffed to
Tidal turns, may one day refuse the long retreat: one day may not concede. 

But this year, the signals stagger and flicker static through spaced 
time and airy winds, and land. Weather, a conductor in processional, 
beats out an old tune, note by note rehearsed. 
There is safety here: an orchestra of snowflakes, finding their cue.
A violin concerto of storms crackling. A water-hued sky darkening 
to hallow down November.

Orchestrated, tender, shifts above and below: skies, earth, water, wind. 
Turn, beloved - let it move your body too. Change as the seasons do. 
Wild, dark, and free, as snowfall 
cradles your face. You also, with dignity, 
rise and fall and turn and tide, 
a being alight upon the earth. 

-Claire Adderholt

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