Lesser Dragons
Not the great compass winds, but the lesser,
the local winds, the mapmakers.
Odysseus once bagged them, but they escaped.
Anemoi, like the wind that de-horns goats,
or the Moorish, Melteme,
the ill-tempered one. Simoom, the poisoner
who fills throats with its tainted garments,
or Rashabbar the black wind
whose nocturnal wings blind all men.
Named, visible winds that chisel our faces,
as if we were cliffs at the edge of the world.
The Squamish, the Elephanta, the Williwaw,
time-swirling thieves. They steal the young,
the babes in their cribs and when we look for them,
a swish of a hem or a hurricane are the same.
The children return, a sculpted dervish
spiralling within them.
Tebbard, the fever wind, wanders through our bones,
a sultry doctor adding fuel to the heat
until a storm breaks, then as driftwood we are salvaged.
The Fever-bringer itself dies,
dry now as mottled kelp on carrion shores.
Winds that gnaw themselves into Chinooks and Mistral,
winds that shape and follow us
to the rim of the sky, where those celestial dragons,
North, East, South and West winds
dream fitfully of once being human.
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