The Wind

Out near the Baskett Slough, the wind makes waves across the wheat fields. It's a heavy wind--whoosh--it could rip your mind from its roots. Is the writer drinking wine inside her hilltop trailer? Does the wine go to her mind, does it whine? The trailer shakes, the wind has muscles thick as snakes. The wind gets drunker and drunker on its own strength. The trailer is creaking and snapping thanks to the wind's whooshing and the undulating wheat fields with their quiet swooshing make the world seem alluring, the potatoes need mushing. The writer calls them mushed not mashed because she wishes they were mushed, dash it! She shovels them into her mouth bland with her left or right hand. The writer is the only stillness in this wind wilderness, except the crick-cracking of her stiff neck. The wind was wild when time began and will be wild 'til time eats its own tail. You can't see, but a fat gopher snake in the grass waits and smacks his lips for a titmouse treat. The hawk in the air has the wind as his cradle; it rocks him soft; he thanks his wings. The wind is the world's wine and has made the wheat grass tipsy, see how it sways.