Climate Poem
Stanley David Gedzelman

Begun 27 Nov 1972 mostly completed 03 Dec - final sonnet 19 Dec 1972 (with later 
corrections) for the Dept Christmas party of 1972 and used to tease geologists. 
Modeled after Trewartha's climate classification scheme.


I
Near the line and the ITCZ
There's always high humidity
When men come here to search for gold
They soon find they're encased in mold
And all possessions quickly rot
Because this climates' also hot
There's no lack of monotony
Where each day it rains just at three
Here days are hot and nights are warm
And insects round about you swarm
Injecting plagues to do you in
While taking chunks of tender skin
So though one can't decipher seasons
For leaving there's no lack of reasons.

II
As you leave the jungle's shade
The winds pick up and foster trade
The rain comes but it quickly ends
Cause usually the air descends
And warming adiabatically
Can dry you out immediately
One thirty in the shade is fun
But you'll be standing in the sun.
And though the day's a bit too hot
The night can freeze you on the spot
From day to night there's such a change
It will a healthy mind derange
Who could like this but a dummy
Stay long here and you're a mummy.
(On hundred thirty where its shady's
Hotter than it gets in Hades
At night when all has gotten darker
Then it feels great - with a parka)

III
Some say the climate is the best
In the subtropics in the west
Rare are days that don't reach fifty
And only in winter is the weather shifty
But no sooner does it cease to rain
Than a bright sun comes out once again
The summer temps are simply swell
So long as the ocean does upwell
Its nice like this along the coast
While just inland the natives roast
And inland from the coastal fog
Inversions trap manmade smog
And do the air most thickly cloak
Its time to leave or else we'll choke.

IV
We move now toward the rising sun
To one more clime that's so much fun
Where what you gain by breathing free
Is lost to high humidity
Here hurricanes are apt to stray
With homes and lives they like to play
And if you only catch their fringe
Tornadoes can go out on a binge
Were summer dry they'd call it torrid
But since its humid its more than horrid
But in the winter, spring and fall
The climate isn't bad at all
Yet not much longer will we encroach
On the land of the giant roach

V
Moving north it starts to cool
But not enough to make you drool
They call this climate temperate
But that's less fact than etiquette
Each day up here a new wind blows
From all the passing highs and lows
Yes the climate makes its name
Cause no two days are e'er the same
Now a heat wave, next a blizzard
Who could predict it but aa wizard
Yes every type we get its true
But never will the sky look blue
So no one would a moment grieve
If perchance he had to leave

VI
To the western edge of land we go
To where the ocean rules the show
Here upon the windward slopes
Sunny summers spur your hopes
A heat wave here is rare indeed
Its just the climate humans need
But windward slopes do have a danger
Rain to them is sure no stranger
So when autumnal clouds roll by
You hear one long colective sigh
The sun will hide six months or more
And winter's drizzle lies in store
So even though this climate's mild
Drip by drip you'll soon go wild.

VII
Further poleward round the globe
Boreal forests the land do robe
I think in all of God's creation
No clime has greater variation.
Far from winter's deep, deep freeze
Summer is a hundred degrees
It warms and cools so rapidly
That shock waves cross the mercury
That is above 40 below
Cause frozen mercury cannot flow
So special methods are used here
To measure temps one third the year
But even summer's hardly fun
Since black flies keep you on the run.

VIII
You really have to be a blunderer
To spend much time upon the tundra
Not a tree is to be found
Since only moss grows on the ground
Here mile is a word that's lost
Beneath all the permafrost
Only summer is less harsh
When melted earth becomes a marsh
The land then is a barrier
To all who choose to tarry here
This climate is the most inferior.
No wonder they keep it in Siberia
So just in case you hadn't hoid.
This is a great place to avoid.

IX
As we near the frigid pole.
We find the weather's always cold
Just take the negative of Haiti
And freeze your butt at minus 80
Half the year the sun goes round
Yet otherwise cannot be found
No sooner does it go below
Than large inversions start to grow
And dry the air by sublimation
Thus scant the precipitation
No wind we find the flags to flap
Atop the great polar ice cap
So amazingly it is the norm
To have a calm and not a storm

X
Now we see our trip is through
And we must end as poems do
And find a moral for the story
That would cap these words in glory
Like if we'd only learn the climates
We'd surely be much higher primates
While a study of geology
Barely reaches mediocrity
Yet next year if you want me to 
I'll write some lies in praise of you
For there must be some use in rocks
Other than filling Christmas socks
Yes, the earth acts like a hardened cast
To record the climates of the past.