Saturday, August 19, 2006

The First Time You Heard the Wind

The first time you heard –
really heard –
the wind –
it banged your eyelids
and called out
like a mad horseman
below the rattling shutters
of your window
saying, Come ride with me,
let’s race the black stallion
across the frosty fields

The first time you felt –
really felt –
that cold,
the cold that sneaks into the stove
and sucks the heat from the last few embers,
that creeps between the joins of your clothes
and kisses your exposed neck
with icicle lips

The first time you heard –
really heard –
the wind’s song
A song so melancholy
that you desperately tried
to think of summer,
the beach where you dug for pennies,
where you traced railway tracks in the damp sand
with your red metal spade –
but the song
whistled around the graveyard in your head
and drowned those memories
and found deeper, sadder stories

That was the first time,
sitting with a childhood sweetheart
in a lean-to shelter,
feeling the shivers of rain,
wide-eyed, wide-eared -
the first time
you really heard the wind

5 comments:

Russell CJ Duffy said...

utilityfishshed@aol.com is my e-mail address.
yet another fantastic poem although my wife would confess that she hadn't really heard the wind until after i had eaten her Mother's wonderful stew!!

Sue hardy-Dawson said...

Wonderful poem it made me shiver
CJ you should eat slower you naughty old thing

Russell Ragsdale said...

I'm afraid for CJ and I, slower won't help. I especially enjoyed the way of feeling we experienced in this poem, wonderful, Roger!

Nicole Braganza said...

This is beautiful

Wastedpapiers said...

The first time I really heard the wind was when I was in my pram. I must have been about 12 at the time - a bit of a late developer. Wide eared, wide nostrils, wide trousers tucked into thick grey woollen socks. I put my lugs to the keyhole and the sound was not unlike a small vole being put through a mangle by an evil ferret. Every time I see a mangle I remember that shrill high pitched wheezing and your lovely poem reminded me of it too.