Where I live,
there is always noise.
A thousand feet from my back door run
ten lanes of roaring tractor-trailer trucks
piggy-backing double loads,
and Japanese crotch rockets shearing eardrums
with high-pitched whining
and three hundred thousand cars and trucks every single day.
My neighbor says the drone reminds of her the beach,
then she smiles expecting me to agree.
There is an ebb and flow to the sound
from dark rumblings to singing growls.
The sound is incessant like the waves that lap a beach.
But ocean waves are powerful.
They cleanse the sand of footprints and cigarettes.
They leave behind a promise in the smooth,
unsullied surface of newly wet sand.
But those cars and trucks and motorcycles and
mammoth, 18-wheeled beasts leave nothing behind
but oily grit and noise.
Where I live,
there is always sun.
It is an angry sun,
white-hot in lonely, blue skies bereft of comforting clouds.
It is a brazen sun
blinding drivers on their way home.
There is no rain.
No mist.
No fog.
There is only
heat.
People who live in wet climates say, "But it's a dry heat, right?"
They don't know that day after day, unrelenting heat
sucks every drop of moisture from my skin
and dries my throat until talking is difficult.
They don't know that it roasts my skin
and boils the tears in my eyes,
that it saps the life out of my soul.
Here,
in the bitter wind,
alone on the wide front porch,
I remember the heat
and absorb the cold.
I inhale the sharp, frozen air and try to forget
the acrid odor of traffic.
Here,
I see soft, blended landscapes covered with pure white
and dotted with blue trees.
Here,
the mountains are white and blue and grey.
My mountains are brown and seasonal.
In the winter, when the haze and smoke are blown to the sea,
we see majestic peaks tipped in snow--
but when the winds change,
my mountains disappear completely.
I need to go home again.
I will go home.
I will leave behind the peaceful greys and blowing snow.
Next week I'll stand in my backyard
and count the tumbleweeds rolling down
the shallow canyon behind my house.
I'll watch the wind pick up the sand
and whip it through the air like dry snow.
I'll listen to waves of traffic a thousand yards away
and try to remember this week of winter
when the snow kissed my cheek.
Jane EB Smith Jan 2016 Written at Mountain View Grand Resort in the White Mountains of New Hampshire during my MFA program with Southern New Hampshire University.