Book signing and art viewing on Saturday, January 25 at Snow Apparel at 520 Main St. Suite B-1, Downtown Longmont.
Read MorePoetry
I'd Like a Cosmopolitan
one crafted by my favorite bartender Chelsey, a Chelsmo
Read MoreCumulus clouds appearing to be chased by Cirrus clouds.
Cloud Diary
December 27th
I wish to tell a tale of winter. It shows up with the outlines of a Norman Rockwell painting. Cold that rosies the cheek. Wind you must lean into (a wreath hung over one arm). Neighbors bent over snow shovels and so bundled up that you do not recognize them. Snow that connects one house to the next with a deep powder. Bleak skies of stratus clouds giving way to clear blue with patchworks of white. And when there is just enough moisture and uplift, the skies fill with fancy. Cumulus clouds disguised as clams shake from the soft sand. Dragons arch their wings. 1950s alien spacecraft puff by. And one tiny exhalation from our lungs disappears into BIG WIND. (Later, it will swirl and dance across the plains looking very much like Ginger Rogers in search of Fred Astaire.)
December 28th
I.
It was a long summer of clear blue skies. Not a shred of white anywhere. Today clouds dot that blue. After months of stretching out in lounge chairs sipping martinis or pilsners under perfect crystal blue, we mark the invasion. Some clouds know to swarm together and kidnap the sun!
But I know the secret of clouds.
II.
Several horses run by the window. Manes flowing, galloping east. They fly even before I’ve opened my eyes. I am sure of it. I could lay on the brown earth, look up and watch, even though it is well into winter. But I sit here, tea cooling at my elbow, watching. Castles with towering turrets. A bouquet of roses – each flower waving in the active air. Steam locomotives carrying passengers to Swiss chalets. Rabbits, round and fluffy. Albert Einstein, bristly mustache and wild hair.
Cumulus clouds hang over the Front Range.
December 30th
I.
The wind trundled the bed and shook the window panes this morning. “Time to get up! Before they fly!” The light grows and the moon dims and birds begin to wake. Finches twitter and squawk in the mugo pine, jumping from limb to limb under the canopy. The tufts of branches wave to the waning moon. The neighbors’ wind chimes clang and bell. The sound of my breathing mingles with the exhalations of the furnace and the hush of early morning traffic. So much dry air.
II.
A bright fingernail moon hangs in the southern sky. Cumulus clouds scoot by on steady gusts, backed by a field of blue. A ragtag bison gallops by, catching the first rays of the sun in its fur. Then a wayward breeze brings with it a brown wash. It smudges the moon. The wind billows in the eaves, rattles the window panes. The wash thickens, then dissolves in one swift moment. A rag gets caught in the rails of the fence. It twitches with each breath of wind.
Winter is here: shorter days, lower temperatures, wind. But with the late morning breezes, the clouds scatter. The sun pours down, at first a delight, then a baleful glare. The bird bath is empty. No hint of rain. No sleet. No snow.
III.
A snow storm is announced for New Year’s Eve. I plan to snuggle down with my sweetie and a glass of champagne. Watch flakes fall and accumulate on the ground and on every structure in sight. Safe and warm inside. For now, it is blue sky and a dancer in a tutu leaping across it in a jeté. She is the last act. Those thoughtful, whipped cotton clouds will soon be no more.
December 31st
I.
Clouds can carry smoke, not moisture. Turncoats.
II.
Yesterday afternoon, even while blue clung to the horizon, I smelled smoke. I shifted around the house like a zombie, watching the horizon. Clouds shifted and silted. Winds gusted over 100mph, pushing brown and orange puffs up the Front Range from the south. A small brush fire was reported just 10 miles west. It was soon snuffed out. Another fire 20 miles away roared: downed power lines had ignited the tall grasses of the high desert plain.
Yesterday, the celebrated snow did not come. By nightfall while fires still raged, that was a blessing. Piles of snow can smother flame, but also people. Hundreds of houses crumbled to ash and thousands of people ran for their lives. They did not stop to grab a coat. They grabbed their families. Meanwhile, all around them burnished clouds billowed.
III.
I still wish to tell a tale of winter. But I don’t know all the secrets of clouds.
This morning the Twin Sisters wear a smudged cloak. The sun rises bright and white, then disappears in gray. But fear crackles in the silence. Clouds bring burning.
I pass by the window. A patch of blue still clings to the horizon. It is now encircled in white. I choose sides: I will it to snow. I pull out the yoga mat and, just as I bow to loving kindness, my eye catches the first fall.
Then it snowed, dear reader. All day and into the night. Glorious tufts! Swirling with elan! A release of power! As if winter had been working all along to ease the pain of drought and had finally broken through clouds that it had not sent.
Our front yard on New Year’s Eve as the storm finally hit.
January 1st
I.
There is a huge pearl blanket overhead and a foot of snow on the ground. Holiday lights seem brighter than before, shining from inside white cocoons. House finches, gold finches brave the cold. A junco flies up to the squirrel baffle. She pecks at the seed caught there by the snow, then races to the ground. A squirrel plows through the drifts. He dives, then comes back up, shaking his fur and munching on sunflower husks and dropped seed. We nickname him The Surfing Squirrel.
The mugo pine is a warren. Song birds shelter in its branches in-between forays for seed. Some branches reach up with white mittens toward a gray sky. Others, weighed down with snow, bend towards the center, overlapping and creating nesting spots all the way down to the ground. “Cheerie! Cheerie!” The chickadees are here! They are the only ones who can call out with such cheer on a cold winter morning.
II.
A new shower of snow comes down with an insistence that demands respect. Please douse the remaining fires! Please smother the lasting fear and doubt! Now that you have finally arrived – good timing Old Man Winter! – please lift the veil just a little. Just enough to conduct people without homes to a safe and warm place. Just enough that those who have homes to return to, or those who were on the cusp of evacuating, have heat and light and food. Just enough that they have safe drinking water and all the supplies they need to get through this Cold Open of a New Year.
III.
My husband and I. We two. Together. Matching bowls of soup in front of the fire. An open bottle of wine. We are each other. The birds outside the window attenuate our relationship through glass.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see a face peak in the window. I turn. It is gone.
Simple and Sweet. Then twisting. Wild magic strikes, then turning, steals away. Sunlight parts clouds and caresses the wound. Then brown clouds return, ready to pierce through the peace of another day. They dissolve into innocent white. And I gather. I gather the secrets of clouds.
— Ellen A. Wilkin
Note: I wrote this piece in response to the Marshall Fire that began south of Boulder, Colorado on December 30th 2021, right before a heavy snowfall was predicted. It was fully contained in a few days. No one in my family or among my friends was directly affected, except for some folks who had to evacuate, but returned safely to their homes. Hundreds of others lost their homes.
Clouds
They form into ships sailing
the blue-bright sea,
then dissolve to fragments of cotton batting
tumbling out of a worn pillow.
I patch them back together into
a boar running,
Europe –
with Italy,
the boot,
at the bottom.
They keep moving, shaping,
seeking form –
something more, something
they love enough to make solid.
I wait.
— Ellen A. Wilkin
optics, prism, light beam, light guide, attempt, physics from PicPic.com
Winter Poem
I am
Where the dark and the light meet
Where color is born
The prism
The point through which
white bends then divides,
spreading through the blanket of night
— Ellen A. Wilkin
The Campanile (Sather Tower) and Mt. Tamalpais from Memorial Stadium at sunset, 2006, Berkeley, CA by Tristan Harward. Creative Commons license
The Bells
The bells
They chopped the air with unfamiliar waves of sound
The physical banging of metal on metal
so unlike the digital trill of
the carillon that last was played from the Sather tower
They rang across the flats
and pulsed toward the orange ribbons of sulfured atmosphere
The vibration in my chest was a second heartbeat
I dared not believe.
I set down the bag of groceries on the nearest bench
and stood in the park, listening
I hung in the space between joy and sorrow
Hoping
we had all waited for a long time
And now the indelicate campanile
Sounded up the hills,
down the streets of Berkley
then echoed out across the water
I caught a movement out the corner of my eye
A group of people had formed
Standing at the crest of the hill, at the entrance to the park
as if at a focal point
They laughed and raised their arms to hug each other in shared surprise
One silver-haired man gave me a thumb's up and handed me his phone
A large headline displayed the words: Peace Talks Announced!
I hadn't known I'd held my breath until it rushed out
I felt my body rise as more air rushed in
I returned the man his phone and sat on the bench next to the groceries,
my plan for dinner the last thing on my mind
We had done it, well, they had done it —
They had reached a cease fire that we the people could never orchestrate
They - the savage powers that took over the earth's institutions
to wage war against each other
had begun to talk
they had remembered their humanity —
that they had mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, even children--
a memory held still in some cell in their power-hungry bodies
after years of demolition
it was not the end — no
it was a beginning
And Like the rusty bells in the Sather Tower
Long unused, metallic and strange
Human voices rang again
with a promise of reason
and an intonation of joy
— Ellen A. Wilkin
The Gloucester Writers Center cottage in Gloucester, MA. The alien craft sits on the far right of the photo.
Weird
Weird
How weird is it to be
awakened
in the middle of the
night
By an alien
craft
that descends
in the shape of a
white ceramic-coated
box
it’s lights glowing
through a
fog
at the top
and its engines
bubbling and cooing
like the trunk of Parnell’s
1964 Chevrolet Malibu
(will I be just a
scorch mark by
morning)?
So weird that it took
until the bright
light
of morning for me to
understand:
this was no shiny
extra terrestrial space ship
but the refrigerator
in the cottage
in which I’m staying
whose lights were
the diffusion of
LEDs
from the Wi-Fi router
sitting on top—
Due to the canny placement
of a paper towel roll
between me and
those bright pinpoints—
and whose circuits told it
that moisture was collecting—
Time to defrost!
Bubble! Coo!
And how weird is it that
Digital wireless technology—
science fiction only a few
decades ago—
and the invention of the defrost
cycle—
almost a hundred years back now—
led to a 1950s sci-fi dream
of faster-than-light ships
crossing the universe
just to see me?
—Ellen A. Wilkin