Winderstanding

Winderstanding
Betsy McKenzie


The air beneath your wings must feel so solid
Rising and falling like hills and valleys
To a cyclist. Lifting you up and up
With rising air currents as
I would be carried up a hill by momentum.
Only more perpetual:
Round and round in a circle
You go, up and up in the sky.
I can imagine the lift, leaning into the turn.

I have watched a family of crows
Playing on the wind as if it were a slide.
They ran up to the top and slid down,
Cawing with laughter, raucous!
And the way the seagulls ground themselves
In a storm tells something about how hard
The wind must feel to wings when it
Batters back and forth, in a nor’easter gale.

February 4, 2006