A companion piece to “On What the Wind Carries”.
I have loved the things the wind brings me:
the scent of distant orchards,
salt lifted from unfamiliar shores,
the dust of places I will never walk,
small pieces of other lives
caught in its endless turning.
I have watched it scatter seeds,
lift the skirts of wildflowers,
carry laughter across an open field,
and leave a little of the world
at my feet.
But there are things
I imagine the wind wishes
it did not have to carry.
Smoke rising from a bombed city,
the last warmth of a child’s breath,
a mother’s cry following it
into the dark.
The wet earth of a flooded village,
where a father searches the mud
for someone who has not answered.
The scent of trees freshly severed,
the frightened breathing of animals
where a forest once stood.
And behind the walls of windowless barns,
the heavy air of lives
that have never known the sun.
The wind passes through it all.
It cannot turn away.
It cannot choose
what rises into its keeping.
Sometimes I climb a dune
with a sorrow of my own.
I spread my arms,
tilt my face toward the sky,
close my eyes
and breathe out.
I ask the wind
to take a little of the weight.
And it does.
I feel it move across my skin,
through my hair,
past my open hands.
I thank it.
But I have begun to wonder
what it leaves with me
as it goes.
Perhaps a little of the mother,
the father,
the creatures beneath the fallen trees.
Not their grief to bear,
but the knowing
that they are there.
The wind moves on,
carrying what it cannot refuse.
And I stand beneath the widening sky,
a little lighter,
with more of the world inside me.
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