the owl and the olive tree

This week, something different. I wrote this poem two years ago, in response to nanowripo. I don't write poetry usually -- prose is more my thing -- but, well, I've always mourned the fact that my birthday month gets short shrift -- not quite the harvesty goodness of September or October, not quite the holiday cheer and winteryness of December. But it's my month, darn it. I make no claims that the poem is very good; as I said, I don't write poetry, and I didn't edit this one between then and now, so it's also my writing two years old. But enough apologizing

This is a poem about winter in Southern California, because that's where I was when I wrote it, though some of it applies to Seattle, too.

hinge

the colors of November are soft
mild mellow -- slipping quietly
from one shade to another:
sunlight like poured honey, morning mists
gold-touched brown and red-touched yellow
dusty bluegreen tree-needles

now, the world stands in its hinge-time
in the north, a pause from warm to cold
light to dark
lively to sleeping
here in the softening south, the season turns another way:
brown to green
dry to wet
death to life at the beginning of the cool-time, the raining-time
standing at the threshold of winter in the desert

imported trees die into winter as native ones go quietly
greening into the rainseason

sink into cool and quiet
into slanted sunlight, softening clouds
as on the opposite roof the mothercat lies
a well-deserved rest
finally having weaned the last of her rowdy summer kittens