When it’s Windy (When it’s Windy trilogy, 1/3)
In forests of my western land,
If you listen, the hush you’ll hear
That alpine fortresses’ command
With walls of pine and spruce that jeer
Approach of day and breach by light
Beneath bow canopies of night
With undergrowths, encroached by man,
That challenge “Breach me if you can!”
Not men or light could hope impeach,
The quiet dominion of the trees –
But where their influence fails to reach
There’s long been trespass by the breeze.
In forest hearts the wind resounds
And brings, to hard won silence, sounds
Of voices echoing sad and shrill
That whisper of a worldly will.
Hear my whisper, hear my word,
The tale that rustling leaves would tell –
If you not like it, know this well:
It’s important it be heard.
In deserts of an eastern land,
The still expanses can deceive,
For hellfire’s hiding in the sand,
Denying visitors reprieve,
From miles of mirrored dunes that burn
As flames, unmoving, and will turn
Life to death, spell for breath defeat,
To freeze all motion in its heat.
Where men and motion will not go,
One vandal dares defy the dunes –
Makes creeks of frozen fire to flow
Skyward, and dance to aerial tunes.
The whispers that the forest heard,
In deserts shout their sombre word,
Force those parched kings to shed their tears,
For echoes of things the world fears.
Memories scattered to the breeze
Are lessons other eras learned,
Forever destined to be spurned
And forgot with too great ease.
On mounts where gods and titans played,
Their rule has ceased, their games are done -
But heights with crowns of snow don’t fade
For eternity, or the sun.
There gods have stepped, and slipped, and fell -
And what sane soul would dare to dwell
Where divinity once did strive,
But only mountains still survive?
The peaks a foolish time forgets,
Are subjects still beneath the sky
Whom aeons would not teach regrets,
But wind makes moan, and howl, and cry.
These prideful heavens, pompous kings
They too will all be taught the things
Everybody already knows,
And remembers when the wind blows.
Do you wonder why I blow?
What I do may be of my will,
But I know well what role I fill -
Do you really want to know?
Then spy the drunk man’s irony,
The brew that swallows those who sup
A life of water; it’s the sea
That drinks all earthly drunkards up.
While those that lie upon the shore
Will have their fill, then drink no more,
Timeless oceans will drink the land
To quench their endless thirst’s demand
But also here, the wind, it speaks
So even drunken Neptune hears
The tune, that taught to scream, the peaks,
And now makes seas shed misty tears
Which greedy gales will gladly drink
Since shores, to them, are but the brink
Of brew their airy thirsts won’t dry,
That drinks of earth, but’s drunk by sky
Always favoured, mirth and pride,
Follies that make the world lose touch,
To value worthless things too much,
Let what really matters slide.
The final stronghold then, of men,
Those earthly kings by far most free –
Free most of all to learn not when
To pay, in tears, the price of glee.
Those walls and roofs they build of pride
To live warm fantasies inside,
Will muffle out the sullen songs
That ready foolish souls for wrongs.
But in proud strongholds woe will come,
And where all other kings of earth
Were taught by wind to face it numb,
Unready men die with their mirth.
Just men are free to close their ears
And eyes to what the whole world fears
And wind forewarns – they live a lie,
And when truth catches up, they die.
Men rarely listen for my tunes,
Those tales the rustling leaves would tell,
In moaning mountains, dancing dunes,
The lessons that make the seas swell.
Of such deaf men there’s naught to see –
Unwarned of failing Harmony
They pray in vain to silent gods
And write sad odes to dying dogs -
Odes that the wind’s already writ
And told the world in sullen rhyme.
If man will hear the breeze then it
Will tell his woe before its time.
And when its time has come to pass,
No dying dog nor lying lass
Can harm the heart of man that’s heard
The ancient, sad, consoling word.
Though the teaching tune is sad,
Don’t grieve what everybody knows;
Forgive its trespass and be glad:
Don’t hate the way the wind blows.
When it’s Not (When it’s Windy trilogy, 2/3)
Today I wandered through the trees
To be regaled by buzzing bees,
To hear the subtle snap of twigs
And smell the newly spruceborn sprigs,
Here I recall – I might be wrong -
A place of tyrants, strife, and war.
Could this same happy place belong
To my dark forests of before?
I see no ruler, hear no king,
No tyrant ‘neath the swallow’s wing,
Nor ‘tween the branches fleetly flies
The shrieking despot of the skies.
Here silence sounds, no end, no start,
And would that I could always be
A houseguest in the forest’s heart
For here the silence questions me:
Oh jolly day, you’ve come, I’m glad!
You want something? Not me? What
Is it then – my wisdom? But
What things could silence teach a lad?
Now when an eastern journey’s made
I’ll ask the desert sun for shade,
And he will grant, as best he can,
A bit of night to shade a man –
But while he’s here he will impress,
Those with an eye for style and class,
With his grand golden desert dress,
His eyes of fire, his heart of brass…
Here something smoulders, subtle, slow,
And life becomes a silent show,
With twice the colour, thrice the drive,
But peace unknown to things alive.
Between the dunes of frozen fire,
This land of wonder, not of fear,
One cannot help but to admire
That all is reconciled here
Here all is reconciled, ‘tis true,
Visitor who will not stay,
Long enough to see the day,
When I am reconciled with you...
And on this jaunting jubilee
What was the home of gods I’ll see,
And in their absence, on the height,
A vacant peak to spend a night.
That night the mountain I’ll adorn
And with the break of morning spy,
So very closely, as it’s born,
The blue hue of our pitch black sky.
Dichotomies of life lie there
On high, where air and sound are rare -
Away from mankind you will go
If of the man you wish to know.
When ‘last the echoes hold their peace,
Just take your time and listen well,
Admit no something that would cease
The things that nothing has to tell..
You travel now as far you can?
How far do you think you’ll get?
Far from man, your heart is set,
But in you beats the heart of man.
Now I suppose you hear it too?
The crashing waves, they call to you?
The ocean, though ‘tis rarely told
Has an eternal peace to hold.
While hard it may be to believe,
This battlefield of brine and air,
With so much sound, will ‘oft deceive,
One of the silence under there.
So follow me beneath the line
Where windstorms wage their war with brine -
Society where none intrudes?
There only in brief interludes.
There’s a seclusion to the seas,
Those blankets that block out the sky,
Places beyond societies,
Where I can be alone with I.
The ocean doesn’t do high-tea.
You, my friend, by nature, do.
Teacups are for you what’s true -
And from your cup you sip the sea.
And squeaky from my little dip,
At home I’ll polish off the trip.
Now found I have much peace afar,
So next I’ll search my local bar!
I’ll soak again my spotless mind,
With every cheers and splashing clink,
The overflows that mark my kind,
The booze that drives a man to drink.
Those fists of iron, those hearts of tin,
Those saints who cast their lots with sin,
Propose a toast to shout their joys,
But most of all to make some noise.
For all their time their ears will ring
And only then in ending can
A human truly cease to sing
The busy little song of man.
So now you’ve searched and think you’ve found
The peace of life in lack of sound?
And when it’s windy, when it’s not,
Another lesson’s to be taught?
All that walking, not to learn
That you are not the same as I.
The dialogue for which you yearn
Is like the sparrow to the sky -
Plucky little flapping bird,
You sing and need your tune be heard,
And want to hear a song in kind -
A lesson you can take to mind.
You want to hear from me what’s true?
Then hark, and hear me speak the sum
Of all that silence ever knew:
I wait to hear this truth I’d know,
Steeped in silence, I reflect,
On my trip, and recollect
That all I heard was my echo.
When it’s My Story (When it’s Windy trilogy, 3/3)
Today I trod through woods I’ve known,
And the trees, they were a trembling,
Perhaps to songs the wind had blown,
Or maybe they were dissembling?
What do they say? I cannot tell.
The shade, the hue, the sound, the smell,
Kaleidoscopes of shrub and stem -
When I get lost I’m found in them.
What does a forest even mean?
My journeys here are dreams of green -
Hallucinations of the ground
That touch the sky and muffle sound
While symphonizing bee and bird -
My ear, my eye, my mind, my heart,
They make the tune in what I’ve heard,
Whatever’s here, I am a part.
Oh you meaning making meddler
Wandering perspective peddler -
Forger of all holy lies,
Are you arrogant or wise?
I’ll take a trek to see the sands
That don’t just blow, they sing, they dance,
And smudge the skies across the lands.
But do you think, mayhap, perchance,
My eye’s the author of the hues
An earth’s rebuttal to sky-blues -
The sky could sing, were I not there,
The dunes would dance, and none would care?
These sites of earth-tone majesty,
They live as art when eyes can see,
A desert is a thing that’s grand,
When eyes admire, and understand,
When desert roses kissed by dew
The hour that daylight breaks the sky,
Some part of that, it blooms in you,
Unfurling from a “what” to “why”
Wanderer, or purpose painter?
Overlaying things, but fainter.
Call it meaning, if you will -
‘Tis a poorer image, still.
To mountain monuments of power,
Like tarnished angels’ grounded spears,
I’ll climb the titan killing tower -
Perhaps on heights ones’ view is clear?
From mountaintops the world seems small
Tempting a man to know it all -
And perched atop the grandest clod
A man might lock his eyes with God.
The man upon the mountaintop,
He courts the Adversary’s drop -
Beware, tis fraught on high to ponder
The One whom thunder hath made stronger.
The lofty view’s not clear, but far
A wanderer? Or god to be -
Above the trees, below the star
But thinking heaven’s all for me
You raise your eyes, and wonder why
Your image can’t engrave the sky?
Man might paint the starry span
But it is no place for man
On peaks one struggles to be humble,
So next I’ll seek humility,
Take a hubris taming tumble
And plunge from on-high to the sea
From peaks adorned in caps of white
To frigid depths the hue of night,
Where here leviathans would dwell,
A would-be god finds mimic hell.
My plunge apes tales of other ages,
And pays Luciferean wages,
Of what is kept when all is lost,
Of climbing heights and falling’s cost,
Of arrogance, usurper’s pride,
Of sins the waves makes man unlearn -
When he’s made subject to the tide
The angels fell to rule and burn.
Fallen things from fallen places,
With midnight’s eyes and darker faces,
Who will wander, search, and roam
Getting lost and finding home
The thing I am's not god or beast -
I am a city dwelling man -
And since I like my kind the least
I flee the city when I can.
Though, at times, my will, it ebbs,
And like a spider stuck in webs,
I lapse and keep the company
Of tragic city men like me.
Lost are the places where we’re found,
Our touch would tarnish holy ground,
Our gaze, it makes the world the worse,
Our thoughts? Venom. Our language? Curse.
I leave my home to flee my kind,
But bear their image in my wit.
My city’s mirrored in my mind,
And all my world is shaped by it.
You fragmentary fallen thing -
The day you fell, you took to wing
And though beneath, you paint the sky
With dreams of what awaits on high.
Alchemic magic in your glance
Transmutes a leaden world to dance -
You measure, trace, imagine, draw
And make mundane thing things of awe
All meaning finds a dawn in you
Who scribbles poems atop what’s true,
Tells holy jokes at sober times
and captures liberty in rhymes.
You took the world and made it art
wrote down the words that once were free
And with graffiti of the heart
You vandalized eternity.
My eye’s the world snapping shutter,
My voice makes the wind-song stutter.
I’m actor, audience, and stage,
only author on the page -
This is my story, my age.
Stephen Bauhart is a poet, a father, and a PhD student in Literature at the University of Calgary. He is currently working on his PhD dissertation, focusing on storytelling in large transmedia intellectual properties, and is back at writing poetry after eleven years of writer's block. With his upcoming collection, Holy Jokes and Twisted Rings, he hopes to finally catch his world in a rhyme.
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