After rain, a clearing wind came up,
sighing at first, then swelling with
expelled breaths and a whistling
exertion that framed the ghostly sky,
a lake of jagged cotton floats
on blue seas and sudden light
that hurt my eyes as it flickered
in the spokes of my Raleigh.

I biked my way on crushed gray stone
above the riverside as the first
gusts hit home—undulating serpents
of jettisoned air rippled and
wrapped around me, constricting
until I was almost still—then
seemingly undecided—hurled me down
a wooded hill to the river’s edge.

Evergreens waved wildly as I passed,
arrow tops and green sides shook—
raucous fat men belly-laughed as
winds whistled, singing in an
unknown language, and a mighty ruler
turned wheels of fortune, flicking
piles of dead leaves up and down.

Suddenly, Thor’s magical hammer was
put back, and the furious blasts
ended. I was caught alone straining
slowly uphill in still air, the
magic gone—and a mundane silence
weighed me down profoundly, more so
than all those failed promises of
furious blasts and gentle zephyrs.