When I begin to have conversations with houseplants,

take tea with relatives long dead and gone,

and see things that just aren’t there,

or maybe they are there, but just not here,

I will become the wind.

 

I will become a resounding gust swooshing through treetops,

black walnut, locust, maple and oak, shagbark hickory and weeping willow.

I will blow through branches and boughs

of quaking aspen and ancient, towering pines.

Sing harmony with birds as they twitter, tweet, chatter, chirp and cheep.

 

I will become a current of air that blows papers off your desk,

musses up your hair and jangles wind chimes on the porch;

an unseen force that marshals advancing armies of purple thunderheads;

a Blue Norther that drives bristling whitecaps

from a churning lake onto stony beaches.

 

I will be a velvet messenger carrying the fragrance of lilacs and lavender,

a gentle breeze to cool the brow

of a man who sits in the warm sun of late afternoon,

contemplating a piece of fuzz

as it floats in the air;

 

holding court amidst ferns in his garden, discussing politics and poetics

with boisterous black-eyed susans and brazen bumble bees.

A man who wonders if he really can taste layers of licorice,

plum, pepper and vanilla in his Zinfandel,

as described on the label?

Twilight