Northerly Wind

16 October 2006, 10:59 PM

There’s an awful lot of dialogue, waiting
for my hair to grow, waiting
for falling snow in September.

It’s October now- the snow is closer
than it was. But I’ve been waiting
for a month or longer- since the Spring,
if I’m honest. I’ve been waiting
since the flurries ceased to fall last year-
waiting with many a sigh and silver tear.

There’s not much happiness
in waiting. I find sadness, solitude,
sometimes silliness, though not much
joy. I’m just tired, and eager for the wind
to change. So strange that I should
long again for home the way it was-
the way it killed me from the inside out,
unrelentingly and without apology.

The nights are harder than the days
sometimes. I think I’ll never see the end
of my own wants, my own thoughts beaten
bloody by the too long Northerly Wind.

I had come to see in her a friend.
I’d say she’ll find vindication in the end,
revealed for what she is: mighty
river bellowing against tender reeds,
teaching them to stand up strong and tall
against her gracious, brutal current.

I wonder, should she ever cease to flow,
if the rushes then will know how to stand
with nothing left to brace themselves against.