{"id":582,"date":"2010-07-13T08:00:46","date_gmt":"2010-07-12T20:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=582"},"modified":"2010-07-12T22:04:03","modified_gmt":"2010-07-12T10:04:03","slug":"tuesday-poem-cowarral-sequence-iii-a-summer-storm-by-joanna-preston","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2010\/07\/13\/tuesday-poem-cowarral-sequence-iii-a-summer-storm-by-joanna-preston\/","title":{"rendered":"Tuesday Poem: Cowarral Sequence iii—A Summer Storm by Joanna Preston"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cowarral:<\/strong><\/p>\n

iii\u00a0 A Summer Storm<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

At first light the sky tore open. <\/span><\/div>\n
I padded barefoot through a maze of boxes <\/span><\/div>\n
to close all the windows. <\/span><\/div>\n
I opened the curtains and curled up on the sill <\/span><\/div>\n

\n<\/span><\/div>\n
as I used to curl up on Great Grandma\u2019s lap <\/span><\/div>\n
to watch storms sweep down <\/span><\/div>\n
from the mountain <\/span><\/div>\n

\n<\/span><\/div>\n
named for a man <\/span><\/div>\n
she\u2019d been widow to most of her life. <\/span><\/div>\n

\n<\/span><\/div>\n
From the ark of her armchair <\/span><\/div>\n
we\u2019d spell our names between thunder <\/span><\/div>\n
that rattled the china and knocked out the power. <\/span><\/div>\n

\n<\/span><\/div>\n
mist on the mountain means rain on the way <\/em><\/span><\/div>\n

\n<\/em><\/span><\/div>\n
Light grew rich and heavy <\/span><\/div>\n
until the horses blazed like molten bronze. <\/span><\/div>\n
Once, lightning blasted a mountain oak <\/span><\/div>\n
halfway up the red-clay ridge, <\/span><\/div>\n

\n<\/span><\/div>\n
sent shrapnel of timber out eighty feet. <\/span><\/div>\n
The stump burned through two nights of rain \u2013 <\/span><\/div>\n
I could see the glow from my bed.<\/span><\/div>\n

\n<\/span><\/div>\n
Rain falls almost silent against a slate roof, <\/span><\/div>\n
and two panes of glass keep weather at a distance. <\/span><\/div>\n
Those storms roared on corrugated iron, <\/span><\/div>\n
and ended the world at verandah\u2019s edge. <\/span><\/div>\n

\n<\/span><\/div>\n
But when I went out and stood <\/span><\/div>\n
on the lawn in my nightshirt, mud <\/span><\/div>\n
welling around the pale of my feet, <\/span><\/div>\n
I offered my face to the English rain <\/span><\/div>\n

\n<\/span><\/div>\n
and she was behind me, <\/span><\/div>\n
one hand resting on the verandah post, <\/span><\/div>\n
waiting for me <\/span><\/div>\n
to close my eyes, to step back.
\n<\/span><\/div>\n

—<\/p>\n

(c) Joanna Preston<\/p>\n

Cowarral<\/em> is one of two main sequences in Joanna Preston’s first collection The Summer King<\/em> (Otago University Press, 2009). A fellow Tuesday Poem poet, Joanna won the inaugural Kathleen Grattan Award, currently NZ’s richest poetry prize, in 2008 and has just received Australia’s\u00a0 Mary Gilmore Prize 2010<\/a>, which is conducted by the Association for the Study of Australian Literature and presented every second year to a first book of poetry by an Australian writer. Both awards were for The Summer King.<\/em><\/p>\n


\n<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cowarral: iii\u00a0 A Summer Storm At first light the sky tore open. I padded barefoot through a maze of boxes to close all the windows. I opened the curtains and curled up on the sill as I used to curl up on Great Grandma\u2019s lap to watch storms sweep down from the mountain named for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-other-writers","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582","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=582"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":592,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582\/revisions\/592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}