What Is Given In Return
There are no words for the sound
of the wind tearing itself
in despair from the embrace
of a house. Instead, one meets
the next day, people who might
have been: the tuneless hummer,
the solemn practical joker
who fails to be funny, the crone
droning from happenstance
to coincidence, the crank
forever explaining himself
who never gets to the end--
all those lonely types
one almost is. But then
the following night, as in
some ancient tale, the task
again to be done: the sound
of the wind--that backward yearning,
that griefstricken leavetaking--
whence? But if, at last,
one finds onesself with a child
growing within the home,
draining strength and scattering
thoughts, in return one knows
the cry of the wind is an infant
abandoned to yield its love
to its own grief as it learns
no one will come--the sound
one’s child never quite made--
such that the wind turns
kin, its keening its way
of keeping closer, of being
known for itself. We go
all the way to the wind,
and the wind goes everywhere else.
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