WHEN THE WIND WAS REALLY A GOOSE
In the beginning the wind was really a goose
emerging from a dark hall into a cluttered room
where a lot of work was going on.
Someone looked up from what they were doing
and exclaimed, where’d that goose come from?
Those within earshot meant to see for themselves
but not before dotting their i’s and crossing
their t’s, for this was a diligent bunch.
By the time they looked up the goose had turned
into a stiff breeze raising the hair off their foreheads
as curtains reached and papers flew
out the windows which made them feel things
could change the way they were
or into something else altogether, even sorrow
and sanctimony could the stillness
lift suddenly enough.
Those early days of the first winds were marked
by the wanderings of a crazy man.
Rumor had it he quit his job to look
for some kind of strange duck that could be
heard calling above the most howling gale.
Sometimes he’d jab an accusing finger at the slightest wafting
as if to say, I knew you when you were a goose.
He tried to teach children how the wind was shaped
like a goose, perhaps more than one, for he imagined
whole hosts of them interlocking Escher-like
over farms and fields though all the while
it was just the wind and often cold or damp
with a history no one knew but him.
Sharon Black
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