breathless

Air moves in a mysterious way

its wonders to perform

invisible, divisible, irresistible

insensate blast, engine of all.

Born in the borderland between sea and sky,

falls on land, and brick by brick by brick

reduces ash to ashes, dust to dusts.

Parent to the form of trees.

Shaking, shaping limbs in rage,

bending the child to your whim.

high on heaths in violence abounding

maddening the maddened, making madder, mad kings,

fooling fools and blinding the blind;

whilst lowly heathers and bilberries lie low

sifting and dividing to nothing your every notion.

We hold your madness near, erect barriers -

stone, wood, glass, metal;

catch cubed power, the better to live

in the footsteps of salt men

who, driven before you on lines between life and death,

end: reduced to leather and bones.

Strangely attracted to chaotic turbulence

you (eddy to your friends) whistle up your fluid familiar,

ring-leader in wanton ruin,

gang-leader on the coastal chain,

breaking rock

stones

pebbles

gravel

sand

silt

mud

slime

Everything.