The Wind Hides The Place, 2007

the wind hides the place where the chuckwill sings,

hides it among brush and leaf and grass,

hides it in moans from the northern sky

that hides itself in the mountain pass.

I know how to hide, and I often do,

while the wind howls around me like liquid stone,

ignoring me here but to pluck my strings

that are covered – well, hidden - with flesh and bone.

I stand in the brush as it bows its head,

the wind giving aid as it bends to pray.

I feel the touch of that same strong wind

though, unlike the brush, I have little to say.

The chuckwill sings, and I startle its song,

not for long – for the likes of I

have another pass and another place,

so it waits, and it waits, until I go by.

I move fast to something, the pass or the leaf

or the memory of the whispering brush;

but where I am going and where I will be,

the wind and the chuckwill have much more for me.