Talking about the Wind

Katie Peterson

I hate

to invoke the

seasons. They

dismantle（拆除，取消） us.

We do the same to them.

I hate to say the spring. It's become

bone-deep routine. Nice going,

May, permission

or bluster, even the little

leaves that top

the cottonwoods,

you take

(shrunk coinage) you take

charge and a share

of everything, leaving the roots

and skeletons of these, who say

obscenities（淫秽）, they've

been wanting

to say them to you all year,

with what you've done,

do now, and soon will. Opposites

I say, always the most

taxing. That one tree

without moving willing to walk

into the wind all by her heroic lonesome

until my eyes move and her branches

tie her to a sister next to her. Even

my winnowing self, which loves distinctions,

confuses her with her.

With these actions your world

takes off a layer from us.

A hand mimes a knife drop, as practice.

I'm close to nothing

all at once, and it makes

small sense, as much as

talking about the wind as an amount,

paid or refused. Or throwing my love

as I always do

over sleeping things, the slow, and what the wind

makes by blowing over,

and then throwing myself over my love—