this photograph from Polish photographer Marian Jordan Lewandowski's site reminded me vividly of the flooded fields of upstate New York, November 2003, as I rode the train between Buffalo and Albany, the distant Great Lake & Baltic light not dissimilar...

A rumpled, desaturated flatness eight degrees north of Saskatoon ca. 1965 reconstituted "upstate" train tracks pre-Fawkes November '03, "Empire" from Buffalo to New York, the same sloughs (though I wonder if there's a local word) of my tar-chewing childhood. Lake, sandstorm, snow, movie, the DDT cloud behind the insecticide truck, hail, heat line spread of sedges and rushes. The line shadows the Erie Canal except when it doesn't. A lot of abandoned farms, pressed meadows moult. Blinds that wouldn't hide a small crow. The inland empire materialises out of the vapour, late afternoon glints off damp streets and green spires on municipal buildings the texture of cake. An aquaflecked dry fountain then a thin line of traffic slowing up for the crossing whose sound barely penetrates the thick glass. Across the square a plaid girl standing munching from a neatly folded napkin outside a tacqueria, registering the low sun's polarised flicker with a pink hand lifted to her eyebrow.