Wind Poem

THIS IS AN EXPERIMENTAL FORM CLICK ON EVERYTHING YOU SEE TO EXPERIENCE THE POEM TO ITS MAXIMAL EFFECT.

Myself is a window I walk through.

I have learned to orient myself with the things of this Earth. I am only here in relation to other things which make noise, grow.

The stars are a skymap. Even light translates to where-ness. Take any rock and place it at the end of the shadow of a stick. In fifteen minutes you will have cardinal directions.

What I haven’t quite found out yet is that stuff about the wind, and the way it comes to the big island.

When I pull up roots at the beginning of their greenhood, the resistance in my hand is a language. My feet know it too, because my soles write that very hieroglyph upon this damp earth. Those meanings are tucked deep in my marrow, and I am learning how to listen.

Yes, everything must come from somewhere. Except for the wind that reaches this island. The solitude of a wind which is wandering along a cerulean infinity. Can you imagine that tremendous unfathomable? Can you imagine feeling for just one second the immensity of the entire ocean? I hollow out on a thought like that, on thoughts of where the wind has been.

Even the loneliest parts of great big blue, that no one has ever seen, that do not even have form, house so many fish. And those depths so dark and irrevocable are enough to empty you. But these are still qualities the wind has not. For the little we know about the unknowable of water, still less we can say of the wind that comes to the island.

By blue below, by blue above, that wind travels months, and yet, is never illuminated by sun nor moon. I think of its Continental farewell, where wind has so many paths and people to touch. In the vastness of all vastness there is nothing to kiss. There is only seeing all that which has been kept secret for so long.

Elements seek eachother out. This is why I am not even sure that the wind on the island makes a sound of its own. Have you ever been sure you heard solely the wind? I hear it rustle leaves and dance with water. I have heard it intercept itself, whistling. But I have never been sure it came alone.

A few nights ago I was walking thick through dark. I could not see where I was going at all. But my foot was so firm in its step I had no need to look down or feel afraid. I did not know where I was walking but I was urged on. And then suddenly the wind arrived on the big island. Whatever moves me forward is that which compels the wind all the way here.

I could be waist-deep in pleasure, listening, observing…encounter is bubbling up, surfacing. And suddenly I think of the wind on the island. It comes through the window like a shock. How could you ignore the world’s first mystery? Some violent joy, some ecstatic whisper thru the angelhair grasses…without height, depth, materia, color. Without origin, without destination.

The wind is moving in attempt. With so much space, so much you have only to love it all before it makes sense; takes on meaning or form. You are given shape by more of what you do not know than what you know. Why else would you keep exploring?

This is what the wind is like on the big island. Showing you what it is through the life it gives to other things. Making it sacred. Look there, look how it animates trees, rains, fires. Making them laugh, in fruit and in warmth. Now drifts among them without ever being seen. Giving itself away, spreading its nothingness around, so that every green thing can be witnessed.

It’s less that I believe in God—

I perceive her, everywhere.