“An’ as it blowed an’ blowed I often looked
up at the sky an’ assed meself the question,
what is the stars, what is the stars?”
- Sean O’Casey, Juno & the Paycock

Forever wind annoys me, pushing in
dirt and despair from the West, a country
of bald landscape and suppressed rage,
a mockery of expectation. A truth-teller
of the content life, wind sweeps that illusion
bare and rough.

Wind is unforgiving, always in my face
demands confrontation, twists my words,
Wind is the force of god slapping me
as I daze in the gentle dreams of day.
A reminder
that what is on its way is a reckoning, a decision,
the devastation of all that came before.
Wind whips my hair in sharp snaps
on my cheeks: “Wake up! Or continue to avoid me.”
Of course, impossible, unavoidable.

I think of you when there is wind.
When we once curled up in the house and wind
cursed against the windows and doors.
Or when we walked a peaceful trail and the sudden strength
accosted us and lifted us up like angels, blew sand
and tiny bits of gravel into our eyes, we could not see.
Wind would win, tear us asunder as we gripped
One another’s hand, the help we needed to keep us
together.

Against wind’s rough push I clutch the steering wheel
fighting death on the road. I wonder
if I could do it. Die. It’s just a thought.
So simple to release the wheels into wind, to be gusted up
clad in wings of dirt.
Wind keeps me close enough to death
to want to live. Most of the time. It isn’t even
my decision, depending on
the wind’s mood that day, that hour.