Stray Wind

The wind is too frail to carry across oceans the echoes of distant bells, too wayward to traverse the wild plains to deliver wolves’ howls and the hoots of owls, too headstrong not to tussle with the storms it passes, and thus lose its cargo of muezzins’ calls and mermaids’ coos. Jungles are jumbled with passages from rooftop saxophonists’ solos, valleys brim with the arias it spirited away from piazzas, and dropped heedless along the way. The perfumes of rare books and hidden brooks are lost too, as are the aromas of faraway bazaars, stranded on city streets, harassed by exhaust fumes. Snowflakes languishing in deserts, petals flailing in glaciers, the vibrations from a hundred fandangos, the thunder of a million migrating hooves, all were by the wind misplaced before they could be deposited through my window. To find them, I must travel forth.