Geography Lesson

I live in Cloverdale, where the magma in the mountains to the east is close enough to the surface to boil up enough steam to light the Golden Gate Bridge. Mist trails over the Russian river for miles on gray mornings, after the sun has begun to burn the fog away. Two trails--a shady creek-side path past the little waterfalls that ripple down Porterfield Creek, and the bald, paved climb to the water towers, through madrone and manzanita--lead me away from the clutter of the village. In the summer, heat is the secret shouted by the weather as it presses into the skin. Snow a few times a year for an hour or two crests the hills to the east and the north. Thunder storms through like a herd of buffalo while lightning cracks its whip. During the winter rains, the river rises out of its banks.

Nothing much happens here, we tell the tourists. We don't mention the weather, where the poems come from.

Photographs of patio garden and hill beyond, where the seasons play, and of the Russian river in flood by Luna Zeffer