a map of the wind

So all at once the sky goes wild, it drops down through tree and gutter, commanding each swaying limb and reeling leaf. The blue gives way to the laden gray, rain waiting high up in the fly galley, waiting for something to work the ropes. It’s the moment where we nudge the wheel, the moment we put hands on our chains, puppets knowing how to make music from taut strings. The earth grumbling the belly, rain waiting like a held breath, like a deep inhalation before a bout of speech. The last blues vibrating below the firmament now, the resonant bandwidth all bias, the spirit fulminating in every hesitant expression. It’d be a good time to call down the storm, timing and where you stand the better portion of readiness. 

I stumble out a few sloppy circles, I trail smoke and song, I offer up and work the remainders. Soon the sidewalk is dappled and the streets run slick. The rain sweeps gentle down the scenery, just like the ritual and the weather app said. Primate grade guile and gall, taking in the signs, and all that jazz. Now the scent of petrichor from the dry and thirsty earth, some dose of precipitation to measure as it colors in the pavement and darkens all the dirt. The calligraphy known by the brushwork, the way the dice recognize us. The words return jumbled about the geography in the stillness of each breath.

There an element of tail chasing, a bit of chasing after a gust seized hat, the story cleaving close to the form. The wind works the body and fills the lungs, the wind lays waste to the best laid plans. Thieving from the gutters and kicking around the crowns, claimed by demon king and lawless djinn and the boundless emptying of books, each breeze and bluster keeps its own counsel. It inks and erases with one brush, deft and expert in its art. We pace its parameters, we hunker down as best we can to bear its wrath. So we learn to look both ways. So we learn to read the room. We pass around the magic like we’re offering a light. The shapes left between the lines, the stories every morning tells. Each of us a wishing well, every soul and bone a map of the wind.