Friday, January 1, 2010

Sun Stealing

I was born in California, in the Bay Area as they call it, across the bay from San Francisco. I am used to the seasons as they happen there and further south. It turns out that I am used to that all the way to my bones. I am still surprised by how dark it gets here in Portland in the winter, still amazed to have snow as we do at least once each winter. We would have snow in the Bay Area maybe once a decade. The surprise I feel at the seasons in Portland remains despite the fact that I moved here in 1973.

I have friends who live much further north than I do. I imagine what that must be like. One friend remarked not long ago that the sun set around 3:30. It wasn’t the winter solstice yet. I try to get that, what it must be like to live in the dark. For that matter, what is it like to live in the light of the long summer day? How about the winter cold? Last spring, it was still winter up north.

Sun Stealing

It's just five below
zero centigrade, nearly
shirtsleeve weather, hey?
Pioneer spirit
by God. I'll lay myself down
on this black cleaned off
trampoline, gaze at
the sky, at the dark ravens
while I take the sun
and run off with it
in my wandering fine mind.

The ravens speak out,
have something to say,
consider my sun stealing
inconvenient.

March 13, 2009 8:31 PM

6 comments:

  1. And here am I whinging because because it's been wet...and 27 degrees celcius.....sigh

    xxx

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  2. Take a look at the sidebar on my blog to see my daily view. It's dark here by 5:30 now!

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  3. I know, Karen. It is dark a little earlier than that here in Portland. what is different up closer to the Arctic Circle is the part where the sun hovers near the horizon but not above it for long periods of time both before sunrise and after sunset with quite short periods of actual rising, after which the sun doesn't get very high at all. If you're above the Arctic Circle, there are days when the sun never gets above the horizon at all, just close to it. That low in the sky sun is the basic cause of the low winter temperatures.

    Michelle, I think that converts to what I think of as 83 deg. F., a little too hot for me any time but you are like hanging upside down in what passes for early July here in Portland. How do you keep from falling off? We are often not even in the same day, you and I. Not even that. We don't even see the same sky, me the Big Dipper and Orion, you the Southern Cross.

    I love thinking about what you take for granted in all that and how it might change who you are from the people I know near by. Just hanging out we would be exotic to each other. Of course it doesn't take long for stuff like that to become habit, and then we would just be bloke and sheila all over again. I would like to think we would have a leg up with all this blogfriend stuff so we would stay above the fray. :)

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  4. We would have a leg up anyway, having done the somewhen and all.....

    xxx

    ReplyDelete
  5. That you, Jesus? Whoever, thanks. Back to you.

    Michelle, life after life. :) I have us scheduled to meet as two Albanians in the 1700s next. We will be two sisters then, dodging the pasky Turks.

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The chicken crossed the road. That's poultry in motion.


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