windlass

wind like a violin
the harsh creak of grass
sweeping the fallow fields
like a sea in waves
yellowed by time
riding the tide-stream
of the late year
drying its withered stems
and the westerly’s long breath
slick with Atlantic rain
driving hard
against moor-bent
harrying the peat hags
bending tree and leaf
with a summer
of regret
running squalls
turn the screw of weather
lift a weight of water over land
throw it from sky to soil
drown bird-cry
to silence
this climate
levers wet and dry
across the earth beneath it
rotates the drum of calm and storm
till sun shines and cloud descends
light comes and darkness falls
on the boulder of a world
spinning tomorrow’s
fortune
from the
winds that blew
yesterday out of reach

© BH, 2021

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By accident, I created a poem where none had been. An empty space in which there were no words. I prepared to fill it and wrote a title.

I modified it and began to write - naturalistic, hurrying to finish in time for bed. Maybe twenty minutes later, there was this. Halfway through, I came on the name ‘windlass’. I knew it was a pulley mechanism but the name also spoke to me of wind itself. Maybe because of its use on sailing ships in the past.

So I introduced mechanisms of weather to the turn of season and climate. A brief hymn, then, to our times and tribulations.