WIND awoke in the darkness, and blew.
He rattled old windows, waking us from dreams of hearth fires and long summer days.
He reshaped the world to his purposes, which we do not know.
In his kingdom, no wall or window can hold him back.
WIND swallowed banked snow and exhaled it in drifts along the edges of walkways and roads....
WIND yanked rattling seeds from the ghost-bone-tree across the street....
In his kingdom, what is scattered is often gathered; but if not, no matter.
It is the cleansing and the scattering that counts.
In his kingdom, there is no such thing as stillness, and chimes are made to be rung at midnight and dawn.
WIND wrote a snow map that I followed for only a moment, until coldness began to chew my flesh.
I fled before his teeth.
In his fierce northern kingdom, there is one simple law: Find a burrow. Or perish.
*credit to Robert Macfarlane in Mountains of the Mind for this simile, which he uses while writing about the summit of the Tibetan mountain Chomolungma, Mother Goddess of the Sky (ie, Mt. Everest).
