A Poem Born of Wind

Also Haiku and a Tanka

The muse has been having some odd technical ideas lately. This tendency to work with deliberately uneven rhythms, which keeps cropping up in my writing lately, has taken even me by surprise. Here is the latest example of it.

The summer inevitably brings some strong winds, but this particular wind had the unusual advantage of briefly bringing in some cooler cloudy weather. But the wind itself was quite powerful.

A Great Wind

It’s a big wind,
A raw wind,
Chasing the summer heat,
Blowing the blue skies away,
And bringing in clouds and gray–
A raw wind,
A hard wind,
That is both dire and sweet.

It’s a wild wind,
A vast wind,
The mountains can’t hold it here;
It courses from range to range
Without stop and with no change;
It’s a vast wind,
A great wind
That knows not courage nor fear.

The wind roves free;
Its spirit is free;
It has no love nor hate,
Making its own quick way
From mountain to mountain, from day
To night; it’s free
Of its road, free,
And no one shall stop its spate.

Its course is free
As a bird’s is free;
There are no roads where it runs;
It shall fan the fire-flames high,
Bring cool that the weak won’t die;
As a bird is free,
So it goes free;
It even shadows the sun.

It shall fly on
Like songs fly on;
Who knows the tasks it is set?
As the angel of death goes by
So the angel of life shall fly
As songs fly on;
And the wind flies on
For its song is not finished yet.

As the wind flies on
My life flies on
Like a song ahead of death;
It has no road; it is free,
And the sun shall smile to see
That my song flies on
As the wind flies on,
For I breathe with the great earth’s breath.

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As the summer warms, the Mediterranean herbs in my garden are thriving. The oregano in particular is just coming into bloom with its clusters of minuscule flowers. The butterflies adore them.

The white butterflies
on oregano flowers:
the garden takes flight!

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I was also inspired by this post in Forgotten Poets:

Haiku Thursdays: Back to Beginnings Part 2 - Tanka

I was inspired to try my hand at writing tanka. Despite its obvious similarity to the even briefer haiku form, I didn’t find it simple to switch to this form with its greater length and development. Here is the early result.

Tonight my neighbor
looks in through my window pane;
I greet the full moon
through the uncurtained window,
delighted at her return.

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