for S.K. Strandlund



Wind-scrivener, penning its ongoing

revisions, the copper schooner spins

upstream (parrying the day’s

against-us). Moored to the weathered-tin

and pigeon-shit.
Scudding clouds; a loosed,

rusted arrow. Finger of execution, the

blackjack dealer rotates like

a revolver—another card? Do you

want another card? 
Crowsnest—the next war or next

beautiful thing! The way life pursues

aptitude; sniffing-out the invisible

beginning. 
A boat drives into the wind—the

stubbled captain, replete with

manifests. The wind speaks fluently

every language, pursuant to bathymetric

rumors.
Pleated epoch—stitching time like

a bullet; deliberate as the

footfalls and tipped vodka-bottles

of a Shostakovich Waltz. Pointing to

the bloodred Soviet flag.   
Brisk, fingering wind, like a

sightless hand learning a new

face. Circumspect, I and others build

the promise of home. 
Our fathers have taught us, and

our flags, that the wind—which is no

more than time—conquers

by attrition. Or, one could say, conquers

by untiring fixation.
Poet—antagonist—tacking into the

gusts; like a compass-needle,

confident, but never reaching home. 
In the ruderal willows, in the

Rembrandt light. In the fading yard, a

dead barn—poet of echoes—its

weathervane still pointing to where

it will come.