Talking About the Wind

I hate
to invoke the
seasons. They

dismantle us.
We do the same to them.
I hate to say the spring. It's become

bone-deep routine. Nice going,
May, permission
or bluster, even the little

leaves that top
the cottonwoods,
you take,

shrunk coinage, you take
charge and a share
of everything, leaving the roots

and skeletons of these, who say
obscenities, they've
been wanting

to say them to you all year,
with what you've done
do now, and soon will. Opposites

I say, always the most
taxing. That one tree
without moving willing to walk

into the wind all by her heroic lonesome
until my eyes move and her branches
tie her to a sister next to her. Even

my winnowing self, which loves distinctions,
confuses her with her.
With these actions your world

takes off a layer from us.
A hand mimes a knife drop, as practice.
I'm close

to nothing all at once, and all of it
makes small sense, as much as
talking about the wind as an amount,

paid or refused. Or throwing my love
as I always do
over sleeping things, the slow, and what the wind

makes by blowing over,

and then throwing myself over my love—

Copyright © 2009 Katie Peterson All rights reserved
from Gulf Coast
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission