Winded
The wind is in a tizzy today.
It’s rummaging everything around.
I see it bending branches and sweeping waves
of clover and broken blades across the ground.
It plays acorn shells like wooden tambourines,
flicking serene rumblings of glittery sounds
matched in time by the blinking undersides
of perennial pecan leaves.
It rages against a backdrop of endless indigo
for no apparent reason,
suppressing the cross kaw of two black birds,
their brave banter besting a red hawk
accosting fledgling, weak winged offspring.
Running from end to end—prankish—
skipping through this arid place
it plots and pesters for my attention,
picking at my prickled skin,
carrying on a one-sided conversation.
Hissing and whispering, it tricks me to listen.
Red-faced, I catch myself straining to fit
the semantic of this winsome trouble maker.
But the mixed up missive sounds like the foamy
echoes that swim in an earpiece
made of cupped paper.
It comes up from behind me
shouting senseless whispers at my back.
Then, like an ill-mannered renegade,
harasses gray-haired Glory
until she whips her senile slap.
The clank of her once steady tether clacks
a clandestine cadence that sublimely repeats
a hollow note again and again against her
blown-over silver pole.
The wind invades my space, reminding me smugly
of just how vulnerable I am.
It cunningly causes a commotion right outside my mouth,
strumming my nostrils as my chest rises and falls.
Then slickly pilfers my lips like a pickpocket,
swishing by, snatching my breath,
stealing—swallowing it up then blending in
as if never existing at all.
It cares to dwarf me.
With ease, it causes bald trees to bob
like bell-buoys of bare brown
knobby knees—
giant stiff-legged elephants
wading in a muddy river,
running to a windswept sea of green.
Except for the wind, these mammoths ignore
even the passing absence of winter cold,
their hairless backs, the one proof
of this white season without snow.
I came here to be with you today,
but the wind won’t leave us alone.
