Some try to squeeze
    the winds out of their heads

    with refrigerator doors.
    Many try blow dryers.

    The winds helix like worms
    through little worm

    holes in the sky
    and in through the ears.

    Cars wobble oddly
    at times like this;

    most cars in the valley
    have fender scrapes.

    Children slip
    off bicycles and trundle

    confused along the gutters.
    The elderly wet

    their pants and sob.
    People throw fruit and rocks

    at the sky.
    Mr. Shimoda, Toshiba engineer

    of medical equipment,
    was found earlier today

    with an endoscope
    forty centimeters down

    his throat.
    "I was looking," he yells,

    "at the monitor to see
    if my heart was still there.

    And it was!"
    Mrs. Shimoda doesn't

    believe him. I don't
    believe it either. The winds

    don't need hearts; they need
    information

    to use against you
    when the time is right.

    The Nasu winds
    whistle through

    rice paper doors
    during sleep, up through

    the floor panels
    of your car at noon, up

    your dress when you feel shy
    and take what they want,

    depositing everywhere:
    in chicken houses, through

    the leaning pines, in people's
    houses, in people's heads.

    Ninety-year-old
    Mrs. Kobayashi thinks

    she's pregnant.
    "But your husband,"

    we say, "died at Midway."
    And I, even I imagine

    centipede clusters, tight
    as stoppers, in our drains.

    They give me
    angina jolts.

    "Take a shower now,"
    Tan Yi pleads, "or I'll leave you."

    If we're not to be weary
    of the winds, if we're to

    live with them in our houses
    we want at least to see

    them-something like
    a rainbow would suffice,

    colors with divisions,
    or a pistol with cleanly

    tooled lines, a nearly perfect
    hole, something that makes

    sense for the wind-snarled
    amygdala

    flapping like a loose canopy.
    Hold a gun. Hold a gun while gazing

    at a rainbow, and imagine
    that wind does not blow

    anywhere on earth. Or imagine
    that we're not here at all

    and cannot feel it anymore.

Copyright © Kevin Dobbs, 2001.  All Rights Reserved.