a brief conversation with the wind

He writes me and tells me to talk to the wind, see what it has to say, so I go outside and hold out my ear and tongue. The wind rushes and roars into deafening howls around the corners, and yet each time I speak, it settles into a quiet hum and brushes my cheek with blessings. When I speak the words, “I don’t know what I’m doing”, the wind slaps me with a tiny twig that gets snared in my hair. I pick it out and slip it behind the ear. It’s Devil’s Shoestring, protection & luck.

Composition #1

Here I am. It’s a new day. I sip my coffee and examine the world from my window. The sky is a thin sheet of white with chiffon of gray hung low in the distance. An autumnal mood lit in the backdrop, the sky gives way to a ceiling of brightness mirrored in the illuminated leaves rusting on the stem. Here I am. It’s a new day. I curl into the reprieve of this fall’s contradiction. Stormy, dark, cold, bright. Amber, sage, ember, crimson, Spanish orange, and amarillo paint the whole scene beautiful and this day glows. Hope lingers here.

Hope. It’s not time, I tell myself, to be the seer, just be here. So, I let hope linger somewhere in the ethereal clouds, accept this stage, this view from my window and sip my coffee. I can write a thousand words to show my door is open like she requested while she’ll remind me of a thousand more that it’s on me to keep it closed. Who knows? Here I am. It’s a new day. I keep my door open for me.

Fall is not about death, even though I watch a neighbor scrape up the decay and stuff the carcasses in brown bags, tag, and layer the bodies on the curbside for “pick up”. Not me. I'll leave this layer of compost on the ground, if only to listen to it crinkle against the sole. The hidden sun genuflected in this decomposition also composes. What looks dead is only transformation’s cocoon. I trust this.

Here I am. I sip my coffee and blink back the scene. It's a new day.

Sketch: The Day After

The pubescent heart put back on the shelf.
We’ve past the last call for “I love you”.
Carnage in the sheets settles back to sleep.
Touch that grew reprieve and fed the pneuma
between mind and body. Dead?
We quenched. We dreamed. We laughed.
The words have past.
I date the canopic jar yesterday.