Thursday, January 17, 2019

Blow Me Down




I’d forgotten the wind –
maybe it was hiding, at work
in tornadoes over America –
but now here again,
a door-to-door salesman of yore,
selling brooms and pots, smiling,
pushing, never taking no for an answer,
pressing, through cracks and half-closed doors
to be in your face.

It brings power rather than peace,
flinging yachts across Bass Strait,
raising the waves,
snapping masts,
heaving sailors overboard;
its business is busyness
and shove-iness, laughing
behind the noise and fury
at its desperate mischief.

Rarely benign or gentle,
when it assumes the mantle of a breeze –
it is at its fullest – malignant –
when furiously fanning bush fires.
It is a variant of rage.
Wind is one face of fate.
We may don our ’cheater
but ultimately we are cheated:
wind is the breath of death.

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