118 The Meadow Ghazal Jordan Deveraux What is the wind, what is it. –Gertrude Stein If it no longer blew, who of us would grieve the wind? Or when we’re gone, will it be bereaved, the wind? On garbage day in the city letters eddy in the air, but still no one can read the wind. Where my family lives smokestacks burn all night and day. The fumes make it hard to breathe the wind. In Visconti’s film Venetians scapegoat the scirocco while cholera plants its seeds in wind. In our time, with windows open in classrooms to vent sick air, children write to the hum of freezing wind. A twister pulled out telephone poles on the plains. I parked under a bridge to not be seen by wind. On the fourth of July I lit a firework that spread to dry weeds. A bounty of flames to feed the wind. The ghost of my great-grandmother lives on a clothesline, filling collars, legs, sleeves with wind. Unlike a river it cannot be channeled moated or crossed. A god that must be appeased, the wind. Though Jordan means “to descend” I have no direction. A confused mass of need, me. The wind.
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