Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, SUMMER STORM IN LOS ANGELES, by ETHELEAN TYSON GAW


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

SUMMER STORM IN LOS ANGELES, by                    
First Line: When a july storm sweeps down the blue black
Last Line: "diverting."
Subject(s): Los Angeles; Storms; Summer


When a July storm sweeps down the blue-black Sierras,
The trees in the park murmur together,
Surprised
And a little abashed.
They stand, looking away from the mountains,
Murmuring to each other,
Like well-bred people at an afternoon tea,
Who talk at random, politely oblivious,
When an awkward maid upsets the tea-wagon.

The pepper tree,
A luscious Spanish dowager,
Trailing oriental perfume,
Vivid in green satin,
With many antique rubies sewn in her bodice,
Rustles her fair rotundity aggrievedly.

The royal palm,
A slender, silver-gowned princess-debutante,
Bashfully digs tiny silver-shod feet into the moist grass,
And droops shyly,
With a delicious beckoning motion of her graceful limbs.

There is no nonsense about the English oak.
The cloudless skies of his adopted home bore him at times,
When memories of gray Atlantic combers,
Thunderously climbing the white cliffs of Albion
Stir in his subsconciousness.
So he lifts his head challengingly to meet the rushing wind.
He chuckles in his deep voice,
Glorying in combat.

As two surprised savage chieftains,
The sentinel palms
Stand stiffly at the gate
In their slender dark nakedness,
Shaking their tufted headdresses in bewilderment.

The flower-like foreigner,
The Japanese maple,
Crouches low, blushing a shy, bright red,
When the importunate wind woos her too roughly.
She looks toward the blue-black Sierras
Thinking in her heart of Fujiyama.

The date-palm,
Swaggering like a corpulent brigand,
A bag of gold nuggets clasped closely to his breast,
Rattles his daggers threateningly.
Yet he throws his golden nuggets all about him,
As if offering his treasures to appease
This sudden wrath of the storm gods of the mountains.

But when the July storm is over,
And the trees in the park look again on the familiar blue skies of California,
They preen themselves complacently,
As -- not daring to look each other in the eye --
They murmur politely, "It was nothing, -- an awkward contretemps -- but
diverting."





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