Wind and Sand

The cat wakes me early, even before the baby, that early.
I relent and rise, no sun close to accompanying. But the wind

is with me, rushing like holiday shoppers through the trees,
its power carefully timed and complete, having stalked

the weeks until now, until this prelude to winter, swirling
in the foyer of dark. And here, with the cat

licking her chops, bathing her predawn whiskers, I read poetry
about souls now gone (what else?) and the ocean’s spray.

It startles me to awareness – too long it’s been now since I have thought
to postulate on that great body that raised me. Suddenly,

I am pining with all that I am for the salted rocks of the jetty
in winter, in the wind. How we would walk, laboring, bundled,

fingering a shell in our pockets. Here, an inland winter threatening,
my feet glue to the earth, squlechy mudprints that freeze there

by morning. But I remember when I could walk without a trace,
the world swallowing any misstep, gently buffing things smooth.

Nov 21, 2013

One of 30 poems in 30 days