The Wind is a Pauper

The wind is a pauper planning a revolution, a falling

of willow branch, fence slat, nails, and broken buds of spring.

I meant to dream of us running for the bus on the street

next to the pasture, how we shout each other’s names

in the din of the wind, how we anticipate shelter

and wheels below us, how we have somewhere to go,

but instead I lay in bed awake listening to whispering

after I held our dog while he seized and died, and you said,

It was the wind, and I said, No, it was something else,

but I couldn’t make out any words. Then you left

and I stayed in our home feeling his absence while the wind

knocked and groaned, and outside the willow bowed in the dark.

The wind promises me new regimes where doors open to the buds

that blind us in their light, where hush becomes husk peeled

to reveal kernels for the horses that lean over the fence

so we can feed them while we wait for the bus

in the dream I never had. You see, I miss you, and I miss

the soft black and white fur of our dog. I could tell

how heavy he was in your arms, how you struggled

with his dead weight. And now the king and queen have fallen

and I feel their empty thrones in my spine and neck,

the ache of all we left behind, while the pauper gathers

fallen branches and promises us this revolution will not devolve into terror.

The horses in the dream I never had crane their necks toward me

like an answer. The bus windows are dark. A whisper asks me

to hush and listen. A May crown topples in the dark.