Tag Archives: weather

2026, Day Book, Ohio River Valley Literature, poetry, prose

Daybook 2026 //Winter 1.9.26

I dropped my apple this morning and nearly choked on a cough drop. These, too, may become the symbols of an age; it certainly feels like symbols of my age, which is best classified as “Young but Feeling It.” Some apples are hardier than others. Like my mother’s mother, I favor tart pie apples. They remind me of the ones that used to grow on the trees in my mother’s parents’ yard, and long conversations over gin rummy about Jesus, back before I started being people’s great disappointment. 

It’s raining and from my desk in the basement, it could be a spring rain. It isn’t. The weather has been kind this week. but all that means is that somewhere on the other side of this rain is cooler weather. Tart pie apples still taste like spring when it is winter raining. Cough drops always taste like winter.

January 
rain
tastes
 like 
cough 
dro
ps tart 
pie apples
the expect
ation of fall
ing and becom
ing just 
a bruised apple
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2024, essay

Things That Remain in Spite of Us

Dynamic Earth – Ocean Currents by NASA Goddard Photo and Video is licensed under CC-BY 2.0

Recent flooding brings to mind the 1997 flood… the first one I really remember. There have been others since. There will be more. That year, the Ohio River flooded. The town of Falmouth, Kentucky, was washed away: entire buildings moved off their foundations. The river was 52 feet above flood stage in Cincinnati. It reached 15.76 feet above flood stage in Louisville.

There was a year, I don’t remember which, that Triplett Creek flooded and the southwest end of town flooded. That same year, a drought caused a fire in the mountains above Morehead, Kentucky and they burned for what seemed like the entire summer. The mountains bore the scar for years.

I still dream of these things. It was a pivotal time for me. As I get older, I find myself more interesting in Things That Remain in Spite of Us: the mountains, the river. They bear the mark of our presence; but they remain. What gets washed away will be rebuilt… it won’t be the same, because it will carry the mark of the flood in spite of any attempt to erase it.

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2024, Haibun, Ohio River Valley Literature, poetry, waterfront

I am reteaching myself to read the clouds


I am reteaching myself to read the clouds. The August air is thick and sticky, turns my lungs into tired chewing gum. Standing on the wharf packing my pipe, I listen to the whispers of the old men in my memories. They remind me: the weight of the clouds, how they crawl across the sky. Fast or slow or in-between. I am reteaching myself to read the clouds. Geography matters. River valleys are different than coastal towns from big sky country. I can close my eyes and see the southern Arizona desert, the layers of suspended dust, the haze of heat bouncing off cement, the urban lights. Storms that come up from the south follow the river like a man in search of a lost limb. August is a haze that’s moved in a week early.


that cool breeze
a tease portendimg
the lightening

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