The Day the Winds

The day the winds went underground I gasped for breath,

Did not you, oxygen gone from the chest wall,

Nostrils pinched in the spare weather, strictest

Sort of equilibrium at street corners?

It was a pity. Who could walk in the hills now

Or run for a train? The water in a storm

Ran down the sides of buildings and the bark of trees

Straight down, like tears.

On that first day, it was not so desperate.

I remember though short of breath

Thinking with relief, in fact, in the dense quiet,

Fall will be quiet.

But more and more as the streets clogged with traffic

And the smog of the city's production lay in its ways,

One could notice persons burrowing, hearts hammering,

Toward the risks of the wind.