For Smiddy: Cool and Damp

by compound complex 20 Replies latest jw friends

  • compound complex
    compound complex

    Gosh, smiddy, it's nice to have a request for poetry!

    "The Black Oaks" describes where I live in the California Sierra foothills; we are, for the most part, above the fog and below the snow. Nevertheless, we do get both occasionally. I hated the fog on the coast where I grew up. Now, I welcome it.

    Thanks again.

    Frank aka Coco

    *****************************************************

    I WATCH THE BLACK OAKS OF MY WOOD SWAY gently against an early morning expanse that is an uncharacteristic gray, but a gray illumined by a softer and gentler summer's sun.

    What yesterday had been the regal, glossy green leaves of the stately sentinels are today, rather, a buffed sage foliage that I do not recall ever having viewed before. Somehow the look, the feel, the mood that overtake me right now transport me back to the foggy coast of my youth. At that particular time of my life I was not so taken with the unrelenting cool of a Pacific summer.

    Now, in this land of perpetual sun whose increasing rise in temperature is, in a frightening way, relentless, this sudden and uncommon wafting of damp and fresh upon my body is healing.


  • compound complex
  • compound complex
    compound complex

    Smiddy: I admit to Split-Personality Disorder; in this tale of youth, I claim to love the fog.

    Can you really know a person?

    *****************************************************

    THE PACIFIC COAST was my surrogate guardian. It held both my heart and my spirit within its mighty bosom.

    My impoverished family loved and cherished the sea, stretching outward beyond infinity; but it was I, more than the others, who took to the e'er dreary landscape. In a most peculiar manner, the dank surroundings soothed me and enveloped me in crawling mists that were more welcome to me than the evaporating rays of a cavorting summer sun.

    I, however, am no longer that pensive lad who found comfort in the dark and cold and deep blue sea. Today, a man in the physical sense, I do not possess that childlike fascination with my former abode. I reside in The City. Luxuries absent during youth abound, satisfying beyond mere need. The sterile vista I gaze upon is that of steel and stone and glass; its combination in regal, imposing edifices commands my admiring view yet scarcely my heart.

    Yesterday's child has vanished from all remembrance . . .

  • compound complex
  • compound complex
    compound complex

    Smiddy: The picture above is one I painted many years ago, It declares my wonder of and fascination with water and mountains (where I spent my childhood).

    Note: I meant in the OP to write Sierra Nevada Foothills.

  • sparrowdown
    sparrowdown

    Love the painting CoCo. Confessed fog lover here too. As a painter myself I love the californian impressionists and tonalists.

  • jp1692
    jp1692

    Love it, CoCo, love it!

  • compound complex
    compound complex

    Thank you, sparrowdown and jp, for posting -- much appreciated!

  • millie210
    millie210

    Just beautiful - the powerful words and pictures.

    You are so talented my friend!

  • compound complex
    compound complex

    How kind you are, millie!

    Many thanks.

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