Kevin DOBBS

THE WINDS FROM MT. NASU

 Some try to squeeze
the winds out of their heads

with refrigerator doors.
Many try blow dryers.

The winds helix like worms
through little worm

holes in the sky
and in through the ears.

Cars wobble oddly
at times like this;

most cars in the valley
have fender scrapes.

Children slip
off bicycles and trundle

confused along the gutters.
The elderly wet

their pants and sob.
People throw fruit and rocks

at the sky.
Mr. Shimoda, Toshiba engineer

of medical equipment,
was found earlier today

with an endoscope
forty centimeters down

his throat.
"I was looking," he yells,

"at the monitor to see
if my heart was still there.

And it was!"
Mrs. Shimoda doesn't

believe him. I don't
believe it either. The winds

don't need hearts; they need
information

to use against you
when the time is right.

The Nasu winds
whistle through

rice paper doors
during sleep, up through

the floor panels
of your car at noon, up

your dress when you feel shy
and take what they want,

depositing everywhere:
in chicken houses, through

the leaning pines, in people's
houses, in people's heads.

Ninety-year-old
Mrs. Kobayashi thinks

she's pregnant.
"But your husband,"

we say, "died at Midway."
And I, even I imagine

centipede clusters, tight
as stoppers, in our drains.

They give me
angina jolts.

"Take a shower now,"
Tan Yi pleads, "or I'll leave you."

If we're not to be weary
of the winds, if we're to

live with them in our houses
we want at least to see

them-something like
a rainbow would suffice,

colors with divisions,
or a pistol with cleanly

tooled lines, a nearly perfect
hole, something that makes

sense for the wind-snarled
amygdala

flapping like a loose canopy.
Hold a gun. Hold a gun while gazing

at a rainbow, and imagine
that wind does not blow

anywhere on earth. Or imagine
that we're not here at all

and cannot feel it anymore.

TABLE OF CONTENTS    NEXT PAGE