Wind is a different thing in each of the four short sections, and the poem slowly turns from play to grief. The first scene is light: a woman delights in being buffeted on a sailboat while her husband sulks. The second is comic and sad at once, as a poplar tree complains that the wind has robbed it and left it swaying with its arms up, like someone mugged.
The last two sections darken. A soldier home from Afghanistan can't find a mountain that seems to have shrunk beneath huge turbines moaning at night. Then the poem looks at the cost to wildlife: feathers, talons and the bones of bats lie among the towers, while invasive stiltgrass covers them like a shroud. The quoted question, "What profit hath he that hath labored for the wind?", echoes the Bible's Ecclesiastes and sounds bitter here. The speaker seems troubled by so-called clean energy that kills quietly. The closing image of white blades "scything the air" is calm, beautiful and ominous, like a reaper at work.