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.