The Wind Poem by William L Roberts

The Wind caressed my face and whispered:
'I love a man.'

I thought, 'Perhaps she means me!
What a thing it would be,
To be loved by the wind! '

I'd just come from a bar.
It was near on three.
My head was full of beer,
Full of noise, laughter, and karaoke.
As I walked to my car
I sang Free Bird and felt no pain.

'Please help me, I've lost him,
I must to find him again.'

'What does he look like?
Where was he last seen? '

'We met far out to sea,
High above the waves.
He perched in the branches of a tall tree.
All I know of his features,
Is how they felt, turned to me.
He sang and sang,
His voice was lost in me.
Sometimes he spoke, but I didn't understand,
What does the wind care for pattern?
I sang to him in return:
Of the promise of relief in a summer breeze
Of the memory of rain in the trees,
Of the lift of a woman's hair,
Of power on the plains and the seas,
Of distance and far off places.
But the wind blows where it will,
It neither loves nor grieves,
I met a passing gale,
Partied across fjords and ice fields.
When I came to look for him again,
He was gone,
Nowhere, nowhere, to be seen.

'I whirled in tornado and hurricane,
I whipped up the seas,
I roared through coastal conflagration,
And blew ice and snow on the armies of men.
Then, after a time, came a moment of calm,
And I thought up a plan -
Wherever there were people,
I'd idle and listen
And gradually I'd learn
So I could ask and be certain
Of finding my love again.
Now tell me, where is he hidden? '

I thought of lying, of saying:
'That man, he's me. '
'We are not as you, ' I replied,
'We change and progress,
We're as a song,
A thing of complexity and sometime beauty,
Performed for a moment, then put down.
The man you loved is gone,
Beyond hope of caress.'

Rain touched my face
And glistened on the street.

At home I found a site of sea shanties.
I downloaded a bunch and printed their lyrics.
I set them playing and stood on the porch
And sang with the wind and rain.
We sang the Golden Vanity and Spanish Ladies.
We sang 'til the neighbors woke to complain.
Then I stood silent as the clouds broke
And dawn shown golden and clean.

'Oh Greenland is a barren place,
A land that bares no green.
Where there's ice and snow
And the wild wind does blow
And daylight's seldom seen, brave boys,
And daylight's seldom seen.'