Hans Ostrom’s November scene is spare and quiet: unexpected snow over a wide field, bare oak branches, cold blue air, and a sense of too much space. The speaker feels small and still, as if the mind itself has settled into a corner of the weather. From there, it drifts into an almost cinematic image—workers slamming metal folding chairs in an auditorium, the noise echoing like gunshots across the field between November and March. A newspaper carrying the day’s forecast is burned, and the smoke rises into a pale sky. The poem ends in a dreamlike storm that swallows the speaker’s desires and drops them as dark rain on dry ground. The mood is austere, inward, and faintly ominous: the landscape’s calm holds both clarity and threat.
Sierra Nevada, November: An Appropriate Weather — Summary
Twice, perhaps, I have awakened surprised by snow in the wide field. November: bare oak branches like cast iron. A long breath drawn down a blue canyon in my lungs. A superb stillness, plenty of room.
My mind sits in a corner of such weather. It sees a few men in brown clothes cleaning an auditorium. They slam metal folding-chairs back into two-dimensional space. That sound echoes like gunshots across the bare field between November and March.
Someone incinerates a newspaper containing today’s weather forecast. My eyes follow cinders and smoke into a pale sky, into a dream of weather in which a storm descends to devour my mind’s desires in a whirlwind, delivering them as dark rainspots on a dry valley.