August 25, 2012

What started out to be a sunny morning is slowly easing into more clouds and a real possibility of rain.  The sky is slowly darkening to deep gray and the wind has begun to shake up the trees.  I can hear the news in the background saying a small storm cell is over the bay at the moment and may come onshore.   The sudden shift in the wind seems to make rain seem more likely.  The cane is rising up and moving with its lanky grace, its long leaves curling around the wind, where the dark leaves of the lugustrum move the whole branch at once, their stiffness less affected by the wind. Patched and thin the carpet of the grass has a peculiar glow in this strange half light.  No one is out, and even the birds are absent. 
   

I Like the Wind

We are at or near that approximate line

where a stiff breeze becomes

or lapses from a considerable wind,

and I like it here, the chimney smokes

right-angled from west to east but still

for brief intact stretches

the plush animal tails of their fires.

I like how the stiffness rouses the birds

right up until what’s considerable sends them

to shelter. I like how the morning’s rain,

having wakened the soil’s raw materials, sends

a root smell into the air around us,

which the pine trees sway stately within.

I like how the sun strains not

to go down, how the horizon tugs gently at it,

and how the distant grain elevator’s shadow

ripples over the stubble of the field.

I like the bird feeder’s slant

and the dribble of its seeds. I like the cat’s

sleepiness as the breeze then the wind

then the breeze keeps combing her fur.

I like the body of the mouse at her feet.

I like the way the apple core I tossed away

has browned so quickly. It is much to be admired,

as is the way the doe extends her elegant neck

in its direction, and the workings of her black nostrils, too.

I like the sound of the southbound truck

blowing by headed east. I like the fact

that the dog is not barking. I like the ark

of the house afloat on the sea of March,

and the swells of the crop hills bedizened

with cedillas of old snow. I like old snow.

I like my lungs and their conversions

to the gospel of spring. I like the wing

of the magpie outheld as he probes beneath it

for fleas or lice. That’s especially nice,

the last sun pinkening his underfeathers

as it also pinks the dark when I close my eyes,

which I like to do, in the face of it,

this stiff breeze that was,

when I closed them, a considerable wind.

Robert Wrigley

I like this poem!  I like that it is so very particular, and involves so much interacting with the wind.  Today I would have to tell of the cane and the thick canopy of green, the clouds taking over from the sun, the emptiness of the yard, the sudden intervals of stillness where nothing moves then the burst of motion of every leaf and the sounds of the chimes telling me the wind's song.  You know the poet watched that magpie, watched the sunset make that salmon pink shine from its white feathers and absorbed by the dark ones.   Often to savor something you close your eyes to cut out the overwhelming distraction of sight just to feel the wind touch your face, or the sun soaking in, or the rain softly patting your cheek.   Cedilla is such a lovely word, a hook or tail under a letter to change its sound, a hook or the tail end of old snow lying under bushes in shadows knowing spring sun will soon find it and soak it into the dark ground.  So now I have my experience of the wind of this morning and his of the wind crossing over from breeze in the first days of the month known for its blustery weather.  I like having them both!