The wind is wildest
of the artful friends that we abide.

When wind allows us share its vigor,
you know its that she intends it for her pleasures.

Wind will never spare our prized properties,
nor pity our loss.

Brash Wind maliciously turns placid air
mass and sets its path to capriciously toss
down trees in winnows like freshly mowed grass,
shaking steel towers until they too fall.

Wind, like Kings,
must always be petty and mean
and topple anything that grows too tall
or clutters up what wind wants to sweep clean.

First primeval man, hunting his food, knew
and used the facing wind to hide his scent,
stalking the game he'd then bite and chew uncooked.

Yet uncalled Wind most provident
first provided fire and appetizing smell
of roasted flesh.

Man could at no time tame the wind,
that Pyrenees cave pictures now tell us,
man did with fire.
For when called, fire came.

But man could never call the wind or turn it off like fire.
Fire capitulated, to be his lackey, baking mud into brick,
burn-hardening wood and giving light to see.

Man took skins from his cooking meats and fanned
his small fires to smelt the metal from rock
and learned to spill the glass from ash and sand.

In one small tick of existential clock
fire was harnessed in steel
and trained to toil for man.

Steam tools burned wood
then switched to coal,
then summoned motive force from burning oil.

Man handled flame,
but not its dying soul,
escaped as smoke, bestowing poison source
as price we pay for controlling flame.

The mocking wind runs free,
a feral horse with fume free power
we are loathe to claim.

Let's harvest wayward wind
that does not smoke like all the soot-wrapped flames
we careless stoke.

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