The Absent Wind

The wind had left us.

The Earth, halted in its celestial arc, sighs, knowing that memory will be trapped in the hollowness of this new absence.
It once walked with us, this gentle wind; through sprawling history and as far as time can unwind upon itself, the wind has played parts in both mundane and monolithic.

It has swept through the air as two became one; it has stung a traveler’s eyes as he watched the land draw inward toward a line of mountain and sky; it has long ago dislodged the sunhat of a small girl, one Paris morning drawn into page.

The wind has been gentle at times; with care it dances with motion sick butterflies in wild loops, uncontrollably throwing the small insects into the ether as dizziness realigns itself with what was once normal. It has softly blown the dust of sand upon freshly applied sunscreen and elevated flower petals above one joyous moment spent staring into the sky.
It has also, at times, been cruel; a small ship, overturned and lost in a churning sea; A tree, tired with age, uprooted and left to rot on the ground.

None shall miss the wind more than the tumbleweed: two beings of pure harmony co-existing within the joy of movement. It rests upon the wind to allow it life, to become more than just a stationary bundle of twigs. With merriment it skips down the dirt highway of a sun-beaten plane, picking up form as it moves.
And as the wind dies, so too does the tumbleweed, a lonely soul fading into the last glow of an ember and forced to lay in patient rest; it dreams of flight, a world of unfurling landscape. 

On sleepless nights spent huddled from shadow, the rolling breeze once lifted the warmth of safety into a shelter huddled away from the gale beyond. Defiant in its youth, the shelter stands firm, rattling roof panels in chatter and testing the strength of every clout driven nail; these noises bring comfort to a small form at rest in weary turn: they are held within the cradle of this shelter, they are hidden from the anger outside.              
In the distance a branch, hung heavy under the stress of age, cracks loudly as it becomes separated from the reaching leaves that are left behind in their sudden panic of loss. This tree shakes violently, swaying and stretching for the stolen limb. The rustling leaves then grow louder as the wind picks up strength, a crescendo that dominates the glade and threatens to clear the land of life. The air becomes visible in a billowing flurry of dust, the strength of an almighty storm screams into the night sky and finally comes to exhaust itself into a faint echo of what now remains.        

It was quiet.

With careful touch, it once brushed over the stillness of the plains, both vast and unending. With lightness of step, it would roll past the horizons of bushland and thoughtlessly sweep its way Westward. It carried the cold of the mountains, a first winter’s prelude coating the ground and leading station hands to clap warmth into their aching bones before day can manage its first glow.

The world fell to stillness within the wake of the absent wind.
Moldering fires dotting the hills threw blankets of smoke across the valley and could only bring themselves to burn with a weak sight; a flock of starlings called and soared above, snapping at the floating ash believing the dead wood to be mayflies or some other bug trapped in a lazy dance.
Time slowed to a halt without the direction of the wind, a well of silence that had sunken into cracked foundations: it became deeper eroding the nerves of the diminutive morning and colouring the sky within a maddening hue of night, the enormity of space expanding outward into a sharp focus. The world became small, aware of distance now as if a chestnut that lands at the base of a tree; nervous energy that grows from every vein faster and faster, the cold of the ground leeched upward, tension that showed no sign of breaking. it would double, triple, loom larger and larger until all that was noticed was the total absence of the earthen wind.         

And without notice it returns.

A night, dark through hidden moon, bows with the faint smell of dew settling upon the grass; heat from the still fading sun lingers in clay and rises, stirred by the returning breeze.
Dusk turned to radiance and blosomed into the light of something Truly vivid, the last breath of a titan or a memory so true it becomes real.
The wind returned to us without ceremony, a buffet of cool air scraped off the oceans of the south, it approached with a turning glide, one that skated over the tops of grassland and brushed against their surface with its palm.
Born from this rolling wind, a new frost blanketed the canopy of trees and called life into the paddock beyond. A crackle of new season arisen with the approach of winter, a frozen call to the slow approach of spring.  

Spluttering, a candle struggles to stay alight against the new movement. Its fight for radiance fleeting, the candle came to its final gasp as the space between its flickers grew longer, grew weak. The joists above the shelter groaned with stress as the strength of wind grew fuller, a crescendo of reborn vigor that took shape and filled each space with movement.

A pressure had suddenly broken, and life had returned to the world again.   

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J.McCray
2021