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Wind

Stillness captures the summer night on the high plains desert.
The air; absolute clarity.
The flawless atmospheric pane
fosters originality…
Nevertheless, none could occur.

The darkened depth above, envelopes imagination.
A thin stratum of pitch pigment
lets flickering starlight show through.
Light specks become the foreground;
the top coating dropping back.

Tall thin buttes, like shabby paint brush bristles, fixed mid stroke
once stained the sky over Nambé.*

The shafts themselves are silhouettes;
blackness on a moonless blackness,
frozen in a task, unfinished.

The breaches in the darkness become watchers of the dawn.
They saw every intimate dream
and burn with unfulfilled desires.
Obelisks transform to torches,
igniting clouds; wakening Wind.

Great Master Wind tolerates no direction from mortals.
Disturbed easily; it is unaware.
Detached from lesser powers,
it can move and remove mountains;
grinding boulders to stones, to sand.

Worriedly, trees beat themselves questioning their destiny.
Submissively they bow, then break.
Bushes, terrified, tear about.
Mesa shaped adobe structures
are convected bone cadavers.

As fast as Wind becomes inflamed, it settles back to rest.
It only flexed its large muscle
caring nothing of its carnage
nor aware of its harsh actions,
leaves, an uneasy calm behind.

And we who paint figures on rocks and see gods in the stars,
create reasons and seek controls.
We are all the tumbling weeds.
We become the mud built structures.
We act on stages with no plays.

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*Nambé is a Native American pueblo north of Santa Fe, New Mexico

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Howard L. Kessler (b: 1949

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Commissioned & Premiered: 1999 Japan, Makoto Nakuro, marimba
Also: 1999 The juilliard School

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