{"id":36387,"date":"2019-01-24T06:30:57","date_gmt":"2019-01-23T17:30:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=36387"},"modified":"2019-01-23T22:30:57","modified_gmt":"2019-01-23T09:30:57","slug":"a-norwest-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2019\/01\/24\/a-norwest-season\/","title":{"rendered":"A Nor’West Season"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Nor\u2019west Season<\/strong><\/p>\n

Waiting . . .<\/p>\n

the nor\u2019west arch a pale slash<\/p>\n

along cloud-filled sky,\u00a0 promises heat\u2014<\/p>\n

big bluster coming<\/p>\n

beating in across the plains\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0lifting<\/p>\n

roofs \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 tossing down<\/p>\n

trees\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 a dog howls<\/p>\n

into the sun\u2019s glazed eye<\/p>\n

falls back into shadow<\/p>\n

beneath a car body<\/p>\n

propped on a rusted jack\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0waits<\/p>\n

for the lull . . .<\/p>\n

\u2014<\/p>\n

\u00a9 Helen Lowe<\/p>\n

\"\"Published, Crest to Crest: Impressions of Canterbury Prose & Poetry<\/strong>, Ed. Karen Zelas, Wily Publications, 2009<\/span><\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

Although I have posted this poem here before (yes, it is one of mine), back in 2010<\/a> as it turns out, I am posting it again today because up until yesterday we’ve been having a blast of nor’west weather.<\/p>\n

And a norwest winds means stinking hot—by NZ standards, that is. (I imagine anyone from India, Australia, or Africa will probably be sneering right about now. \ud83d\ude09 ) It’s not just heat, though: the norwester can be pretty destructive once it gets up a head of steam.<\/p>\n

Yesterday was the culmination of the latest round of norwesters and what I call meltingly hot—until the southerly blew on through bringing some up-from-the-Antarctic, off-the-southern-ocean cool.<\/p>\n

So today seemed a good time to honour the norwester, which is one of the defining characteristics of life in this part of NuZild (aka NZ.) I explain a bit more about that in the 2010 post: see the link above, or here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Nor\u2019west Season Waiting . . . the nor\u2019west arch a pale slash along cloud-filled sky,\u00a0 promises heat\u2014 big bluster coming beating in across the plains\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0lifting roofs \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 tossing down trees\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 a dog howls into the sun\u2019s glazed eye falls back into shadow beneath a car body propped on a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36387"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36387\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36393,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36387\/revisions\/36393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}