60 Seconds for Wednesdays on Whidbey: Weathering by Fleur Adcock.

Coming to you from Whidbey Island, Washington this is 60 Seconds, your daily dose of hope, imagination, wisdom, stories, practical tips, and general riffing on this and that.

Here, in my home on Whidbey Island I believe I know well what prompted Fleur Adcock to write the poem, Weathering.

Weathering

 Literally thin-skinned, I suppose, my face

   catches the wind off the snow-line and flushes

   with a flush that will never wholly settle. Well:

   that was a metropolitan vanity,

   wanting to look young for ever, to pass.

   I was never a pre-Raphaelite beauty

   nor anything but pretty enough to satisfy

   men who needed to be seen with passable women.

   But now that I am in love with a place

   which doesn’t care how I look, or if I’m happy,

   happy is how I look, and that’s all.

   My hair will turn grey in any case,

   my nails chip and flake, my waist thicken,

   and the years work all their usual changes.

   If my face is to be weather-beaten as well

   that’s little enough lost, a fair bargain

   for a year among lakes and fells, when simply

   to look out of my window at the high pass

   makes me indifferent to mirrors and to what

   my soul may wear over its new complexion.” [Fleur Adcock]

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Production Team: Quarter Moon Story Arts

Music: Mer’s Waltz from Crossing the Waters by Steve Schuch & Night Heron Music

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