Tag: power outage

Lugubrious etymologically descends from the dinosaurs in “Allegro Non Troppo” (1976) when the great reptilian gargantuans gentle and armored alike move south ahead of the ice and melt into tar. In Bach fugue file they march.

I was sitting in bed four nights ago typing this, under a pile of covers, plus fully clothed, wearing two pairs of pants, three shirts, a sweater, a vest, a wool watch cap, and a pair of wool socks. It was 12 degrees Fahrenheit outside, windchill below zero. The house had lost power eight hours ago, years ago, the vicious east winds having blown down enough trees around town to put mist local folks in a freezer. But I gave up the typing in the cold. It was now 30 degrees inside the house. I pulled my hands inside the covers like a turtle for the long cold night and we decamped the wood igloo the next morning moving happily south to a warm house full of warm children.

Frost’s promises to keep keep us sustained, moving, to keep warm. Yes, “The woods are lovely, dark and deep,” but what melancholy invites us in? Our horse still questions why we might stop here. The museums are also lovely, though well lit, still dark and deep, security guards meandering the lost empty halls, the paintings wired, the statues as still and as cold as ice sculptures, and they don’t allow horses in. Anyway, we prefer trees wandering in the wind full of birds and squirrels and lost kites and balls and flying saucers and climbing kids.

Earlier that afternoon, I was in the backyard, preparing a place for Zoe, when I heard a rushing sound, a falling dinosaur come to roost, and heard the voice of the tall Sauroposeidon, a wind and wood splintering crash and crush, and looked north to my neighbor’s backyard to see the 100 foot 100-year-old east Pine limbs still shaking off the ice and snow where it had come to rest breaking through the ridge beam, the tree’s upper girth shattering off and coming to rest in the front yard.

The frightfully freezing cold day moves slowly lugubriously on and we learn that pine tree but one of hundreds of trees falling all about town in the east wind in soaked soils across power lines, cars, streets, houses, parks and lots.

Back home now, five days on, power restored, but morning after ice storm moving across last night, but still now, windless, half inch of ice coating tree limbs, cars, street, wires, the downed dinosaur leaning across the roof next door. Fog. The dickens of a cold fog. But should we lose power again the air is at least warmed up some, to just below freezing outside.

A lugubrious fog has settled in, sifting down through the firs, down the street, over the houses and yards dotting the rotting old volcano.