I wanted to find a poem about weather as there has been an abrupt change here. We live right by the sea between two hills and on the outer reaches of the estuary of a very large river, joined by a smaller bust still significant river. Across the channel from us is another country, and looking out to sea from the beach, if we had telescopic vision and the earth was flat, then the next land we would see is Newfoundland… we live in Uphill, and the great river is the Severn, and its major tributary is the River Avon. Our location has a lot to do with the weather we experience and the forecasts cannot always get it right for us as the hills nearby swirl the rain clouds away on occasion, or the sea brings the drizzle sweeping in. From the upper rooms of our house you can’t quite see the sea but you can look across the low area of the south Somerset coast down towards Devon. From my room where I work at the back of the house I look east, and I can see the line of the Mendip Hills snaking inland. I sit by the window so I’m looking out all the time, seeing the clouds moving, gathering, passing, the sun rising in winter, the trees moving with the wind.
I went to my favourite poetry site, www.poets.org, to look for a weather poem and was delighted at the choice. It’s a great site and you can look for poems by poet, by topic, by chance! there is a load of information about everything you could imagine. So I was looking for a weather poem and this is what they suggested:
- Sleet by Alan Shapiro
- From “Snow-Bound,” 11:1-40, 116-154 by John Greenleaf Whittier
- In April by James Hearst
- Now Winter Nights Enlarge by Thomas Campion
- The Storm by Theodore Roethke
- Ode to the West Wind by Percy Bysshe Shelley
- The Snow Storm by Ralph Waldo Emerson
- A Winter Without Snow by J. D. McClatchy
- An Octave Above Thunder by Carol Muske-Dukes
- Rain by Claribel Alegría
- Even the Rain by Agha Shahid Ali
- Aubade: Some Peaches, After Storm by Carl Phillips
- It Was Raining In Delft by Peter Gizzi
- Sitting Outside by W. D. Snodgrass
- A Crosstown Breeze by Henry Taylor
- A Line-storm Song by Robert Frost
- Flood by Eliza Griswold
- Flood by Miyazawa Kenji
- Great Sleeps I Have Known by Robin Becker
- Problems with Hurricanes by Victor Hernández Cruz
- Snow by Naomi Shihab Nye
- Who Has Seen the Wind? by Christina Rossetti
Here is just a little poem, a well-known one by Christina Rossetti; we’ve had a lot of wind recently, but being by the sea that’s what we expect!
Who has seen the wind?Neither I nor you:But when the leaves hang trembling,The wind is passing through.Who has seen the wind?Neither you nor I:But when the trees bow down their heads,The wind is passing by.
Lois Elsden 