top of page

THE WIND'S LONGING

  • sgmcinerney600
  • May 18
  • 1 min read

I had not thought before of the wind's longing,

how it always seems in seach of something lost,

like a cloud set down on a green hill at evening,

or a letter trembling in a young woman's hand,

going about the world in search of this one thing,

day after day, year after year, as ghosts might do;

setting chairs cartwheeling from cafes in the street,

tearing down powerlines, lifting up roofs,

refusing to countenance any secret places

where the source of its deep sorrowing might hide.


But whispering, too, the deepest secrets of its heart,

sand blown along the pier mixed with sea-mist,

playing around the faces of summer girls

who flick boys from their hair, lick salt from their lips;

a feather, a petal, a seagull, the seeds of milkweed

blown with their shadows gently around the earth,

all inheriting the wind's own yearning,

all longing, but never quite able to find

this one thing, lost at the wind's beginning.

I had not thought of the wind's longing until today.


SG McInerney

 
 

Recent Posts

See All
THE TESTAMENTS

Open them at any page, on any scene, God is doing his good cop/bad cop routine. SG McInerney

 
 
The Back Window, Kiama

A morning soaking in the windowpane like a photograph, dripping with ablution from its last bath, and lifted to the line; details drying in their resolution - wattle; mountain sloping to the ocean; si

 
 
Monday Morning (Kiama, 1997)

The weekend gone, the emptied bins are out. Another night of icy wind and rain. Stormwater rushes past towards the drain, With beer-like head of suds, Band Aid packet, A Kmart catalogue and someone's

 
 
bottom of page