October 27, 2012

All night the wind railed at the windows, pinecones dropped onto the roof like tiny bombs, leaves like confetti swirl down from the trees, green as well as the fewer gold and brown ones.  Clouds raced over the moon like a goose-gray quilt blowing in the wind.  The dark always seems darker when there are clouds, though you would think dark is dark enough.  This morning the clouds are breaking up and blue is leaking through, becoming a flood of color.  All around you can hear the wind sounding like waves crashing against the shore, an ocean of air on the move.
 
And so today, when the birds seem to be scarce and even the cat is not out and about, a poem about what is present . . . the wind!

LXXV

Of all the sounds dispatched abroad, 
There’s not a charge to me 
Like that old measure in the boughs, 
That phraseless melody 
  
The wind does, working like a hand     
Whose fingers comb the sky, 
Then quiver down, with tufts of tune 
Permitted gods and me. 
  
When winds go round and round in bands, 
And thrum upon the door,        
And birds take places overhead, 
To bear them orchestra, 
  
I crave him grace, of summer boughs, 
If such an outcast be, 
He never heard that fleshless chant        
Rise solemn in the tree, 
  
As if some caravan of sound 
On deserts, in the sky, 
Had broken rank, 
Then knit, and passed       
In seamless company.

Emily Dickinson

I had not read this poem by Dickinson before, it's odd rhyming caused me to reread it several times before I was comfortable with it.  Some images are so arresting, the wind "working like a hand/ whose fingers comb the sky" and the other images of music . . . bands, thrum, orchestra, chant, but my favorite is "some caravan of sound" that breaks rank, then comes together seamless, where I imagine the sound of thousands marching footsteps drumming overhead passing over and around the house, and they continue unopposed, on and on in seeming ceaseless waves.  The wind has always made me nervous, and such a continuous wind even more so.  I guess I am uneasy reminded of how little we control in this world, and grateful to be sheltered from it, and that it will not be more than walls can bear, at least today! 
 
Now the sky reaches the peak of blue, cloudless and bright, and still the wind marches on, that caravan of sound, carrying leaves, and making waves which I can hear adding their rush to the wind's march!