It’s Election Day Eve morning. The temperature has risen to 34, and the snow is dripping off the metal roof faster than it’s accumulating. I find myself wondering if this unforecasted warmth is a sign of the much-discussed “blue wave.”

No way to know until we know.

Either way, change is on the horizon. So we wait.

I try to keep myself busy. There’s a lot to do. Still working on getting our house in Fort Collins ready to rent. Still sorting through 22 years lived in suburbia, separating what will go to the kids, be donated, or go to storage, from what will fit into the cabin with us.

When the snow started this morning, it quickly went from tiny swirls to thick heavy flakes blowing from the north. The layer of clouds over the south were thin enough that the snow was illuminated in sunlight, though no blue sky shown through. Knowing better, I search the sky for meaning, for signs or omens, and this well-lit blizzard seems hopeful to me, too.

When the blue finally appears, I watch the clouds go their separate ways, and scribble a poem.
 
On the Wind

The clouds swirl and churn
in westerly gusts,
translucent and opaque,
sunlit whites and rainbow tinged,
roiling across the deep static blue.
 
The clouds are story-tellers,
masters of the unspoken
spoken word.
Petroglyphs and cave drawings
in motion on blue lapis.
 
Dragons and horses and ravens,
hunters and warriors,
whirling dervishes, and wizened orators
dance and change places,
 
a choreography of lives and deaths,
real and imagined.
 

If you weren’t able to vote earlier, tomorrow is your day. Brace the lines and make your voice heard.

So much depends on it.

 

 

Copyright © 2018 Carmel Mawle. All rights reserved.