
Wind voices
Wind from Africa,
sand-cloud billows,
shakes the poplars dry,
rattles the water-hiss from the leaves,
leaves only the angry crackle of breaking
and the distant tonguing of flames.
Wind songs
Nothing is more eloquent than the wind,
though our ignorant ears rarely understand the words.
It murmurs different words to different trees,
sings different songs with their leaves,
water-ripples through the long grasses,
teasing whispers from waving seed heads,
and the birds weave their counterpoint,
sweet and soothing, even to its anger.
There was wind in the night,
in the attic, the chimney,
rattling the house and battering the roof tiles.
We check the leaks and hope for calm.
We are slipping into the dark again,
the water world, the shadow world,
no sky, no moon, no stars to see,
just the charcoal world of gathering cloud.
Folded in crow’s wings,
bare sticks of waiting trees
and the cold stealth of rain,
we are whip-lashed.
The ticking stove keeps the ghosts at bay,
the silence of wet meadows,
the hunger of fragile bones,
and beyond, a whole world watches.
Ears twitch and noses,
hedge drips as they wait
for our presence to fade,
and for our light to dim.
Painting by Krzyżanowski
The wind that blew all night has stripped the leaves
and ripped the ivy from the wall;
its hot breath bringing summer from the south
has faltered, anger in its mouth.
Wild storms will come, I hear the urgent call
of songbirds sheltered by the wall,
and nothing battles in the higher air,
no wings are crumpled, tossed aside like chaff,
the magpie doesn’t leave her swaying nest,
a feathered anchor for her fledgling brood.
I hear alarm in every leafy sigh
and sough of branches, heavy with new leaf,
in every flower head with petaled crown
that fragile, bows, so soon to come to grief.
Wind has blown the sun away
and strung plastic pigeon-scarers
from the boughs of unleafed trees.
First white blossom dims
in this wild light of no sky no cloud
an opalescent pall
dull as a sand-silted pearl.
birds
in the claws of the wind
torn from sky perches
wings bent to another course
slice through the rain
Wind winds through cracks and crannies, picking at
the insulation around the frames of window and door,
poking frigid fingers into spine and soup, chilling hot
food with a frozen flap of the hand. Wind whines in
the chimney, rattling doors to get in, riffling the pages
of an open book, rustling like dead leaves or flame-
crackle in the stove. Wind wins the battle with defences,
teasing the cracked plaster apart to whisper with thin lips,
This is the way of spring, the bright promises made, the
singing and the shooting, the sharp cut and thrust of birth.
wind pours
a cascade
from the ocean sky
sweeping leaves birds and branches
in its flood.
A butterfly cinquain that doesn’t quite fit the remit for Colleen’s challenge as I have only used a synonym for one of the words.
The hand
that shakes the trees
is the wind’s, the voice that
calls in the night and stirs your dreams.
Listen
to its wild song woven with threads
of moon silver and the
gentle questions
of owls.
Words from the poemetry unit
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