That's where I'm at. Under the mirror of the wind. Skeered Crickety, I am. You'd be too, if'n you figured you were buried here, just like me. 'Tween a time and a rocky place. That's all we got, each one of us, I figured it out. Not in the nick of time. But time enough. One thing can't last, and that's bein' scared.
But the Crickety, we'll never stamp that out. It's dancing in the blood to the tune of a spirochetes fever. Something once picked up while down in the cloud jungles in Central America during the mid eighties; or on a long forgotten trip to Mexico from a picnic by an ancient river.
Something has been waiting to hatch after three or four decades. Something ripening within to burst out at the most inopportune moment. That would be any serious moment for most of us. That statement works both ways. Because any moment it can happen. Damn straight I'm Skeered Crickity. You should be too because the poles are melting and you know what that means.
Talk about Pandora. A host of primeval maladies arise from the vaporous respiration of a millennia's worth of pent-up breath. The pristine, captured final exhalation of a dying god. That's how long its throes have been.
Damn straight, I'm Skeered Crickity. Except something keeps whispering to me. Every night as I step outside to murmur my absolution to the stars. It's the wind reassuring me with a sudden hush that it's on my side, so I sigh.
The wind's long gone for now but this echo of its kiss escapes into the frozen night of my mind. I stop and really think about the wind. For a long time I dwell upon it. Something about what it said continues to haunt me. It goes a long way toward reassuring me from my Crickety fear.
Something about the starry night and the deep recesses in my mind. The twinkling synapses in my brain. Branching out into the sparkling umbrage of the constellations. Providing shelter to keep me sane.
Knowing that the wind will come and blow away the toxins stalking me today, I can relax. The thing is (aren't you beginning to see?) that I can't trust the wind. Not for the life of me. It's always unexpectedly shifting its course. Or disappearing as fast as it came, for instance.
I think the wind's self-interest remains quite evident. It goes back to where it came from. No matter where it may travel. That's when my thought begins to unravel. Maybe the wind remains in my mind.
The wind's alignment seems neutral to me. The promises it leaves in its wake, I cannot always believe. The rustling of leaves in the trees may be the tongues by which it speaks. In a language we may only come to understand from the severity or lack of its tone. Some days the weather and cloud patterns are just right. On some afternoons I can hear the wind coming from a distance.
It's announcing its arrival with playful psionic insistence. On those mornings the harbors are afloat with full-blown dreaming sails. Dotting the laurence rippling across the horizon. These are the days the seabird's calls pervade the breeze. It's days like these I find myself down upon my knees. Face upraised to the sky. I imagine all the pollen tossed on the golden drafts of the Sun. Fearing new viruses thawing from under continental shelves of ice for everyone. Hoping its just a precedent for paradise. Wouldn't that be nice.
I consider the slow torsion of the wind along with its absence. Upon what foundation is the wind built? The spin of the planet churning the atmosphere and the incoming solar radiation winding itself into the process. It's a winding and an unwinding left to confront whosoever may be out standing against it.
