We have had a lot of windy days recently.  I love the wind.  It is so alive, so fresh, so tingling.  It chases the clouds and dances the trees.  It brings air swirling around us from far distances, mixing and mingling our breath, our scents.  My Professor of Geology said ‘Perfection is death’.  If we didn’t have different temperatures of air and of water we wouldn’t have rain, we wouldn’t have our abundant life, we wouldn’t have wind.

When it is next windy, take time to feel it and enjoy it, and send your breath with it as it journeys on.

Highly strung

The wind is skeeting the tired tide,
the slow surface of low waves,
blowing it away from shore
in fast running sheets like hidden shoals
escaping the shallowing land.

Above, it seizes a sycamore tree,
lookout on the cliffs,
ballooning in its branches,
sending wild signals
with its blowabout hair.

The swifts are racing it,
tossing their bodies high
before they swoop to find its sinew.

It shakes and sifts the banked bracken,
whistling through grass
and nettle feathers at its edge.

The wind is highly strung tonight,
whirling skirts and stamping feet,
shape-shifting the landscape in random acts of passion.