March is a good time to watch the wind.
The first big blow took the blossoms off the Bradford pears. I saw the Wise Woman coming out of her greenhouse, looking at a blizzard of white petals.
The wind made all the birds who dared to fly look like crows — flying as if rowing, rather than flapping. Later, the wind piled pine pollen in small, yellow dunes and lifted the cowlick I’ve been trying to plaster down since grade school.
All that made me think about poets who have written about wind. My memory, adrift, grounded on Anne Carson’s “Hokusai.”
Hokusai was a Japanese artist who at 83 announced that it was time.
He made a lion every morning for 219 days. Winds blew lions out of the snowy pines over his cottage, the lions’ paws
mauling stars
on the way down.
Emotions — like the anger and frustration that can build up when you’re working, even at something you love — are like the wind, blowing one way and then another.
The poet says Hokusai continued to draw, hoping for a peaceful day.
• Anne Carson’s poem “Hokusai” can be found here:
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