Picturing Wind

Picturing the Wind

I pass her sister pillar, punk

tagged by some bird

or bug girl bold on an old

woods road beak freak

you can’t even see until

the snow’s so thick you

crawl on past into the pitch

of the curve and so today we

went by on foot

this time, not a drive,

and hoofed it in

past the angler tugging his

thin microfilament in the rising

Easter river waters, too

colorful to be a poacher

and he picked the water

with the bottom of his hip-

rubber boots like a black-

belt sweeping into a kata:

sweep and hold and block

all along tugging on the beginning

of spring, like she wore

a too short dress for the
weather and he needed

to get her attention, yes

past him and then past an old

stone pump house, flooded

but still intact, call it new

facia and rafters, mossy but

solid, and different graffiti than
a bird’s woody woodpecker

head without his popular somewhat
pompadour comb and into, into
alongside the rail ties bastardized to soak up

the wettest, river seepage spots

of this river road, past the curled

and curve of shy ferns, retrousse

leaves on the grips of ladles,

or like the necks of geese

I’ve been missing at the pond

a mile away, past the run-

off from the factory and the black

oak leaves, leaves that

aren’t supposed to be

black and shit the smell the raw aw-

ful smell and then the soft

too soft to get close to the river

or I’ll slip in and that sister

trestle, or what was left

boasting years ago to be

the tallest in the region even

and before trees grew

back a single-engine plane

flew beneath her, her rails, and was

cheered for the clearance

and if I followed long enough

I’d be at their feet, the once cheering

ones, they’ll be praised

briefly and the gate

that opens to them at dawn

would shake if the wind picked

up on this hill and I’d smell

woodsmoke still, and the fisher-

man’s Swisher Sweets,

and Easter Sunday ham.

The rail lines are silent,

and creosote-soaked ties

are garden retaining walls now,

and an odd bird sometimes

comes up, but never this side

of the bridge, shy in the wind,

shy outside the radius

of the river, the trestle,

what’s left, and the wind

picking up, yes, cheeky

as she is, (but it's Easter

and she's discrete)
picking up her soaked
skirt, her petticoat of winter

leaves.