Wind power: four movements

Allegro

Out on a sailboat secure in her windbreaker she enjoys being buffeted so much that her husband grows sullen & points the boat toward shore

Andante

The wind took all my money & threw it in the gutter says the poplar tree & I’m left swaying like an idiot with my arms still up

Adagio

He came home from Afghanistan & couldn’t find the mountain at first

old Backbone Mountain had shrunk almost to nothing

pinned down by 400-foot turbines moaning through the night

Largo

Stiltgrass spreads like cancer between the pylons a green feathery shroud for the clumps of feathers

the beaks & talons blue as old ice

the delicate finger bones of forest bats stripped of the brown parchment on which they flew

What profit hath he that hath labored for the wind?

& overhead the bone-white blades scything the air