i might succumb to the dry cool breeze blowing today unexpectedly from the east. it doesn't bring a wall of sand or air thick with poison or even smoke from the forest, that constantly smouldering forest down the two-lane highway. it makes the limbs of those nectarine trees sway like unsteady drunks, teetering atop high-heels. only knocks off the lightest blooms and barely bothers the roses.

i do not intimately know the wind; i do not know its various names and only occasionally its origins. the wind and i met anonymously, as in the coatroom of a dark restaurant; we recognized one another immediately as strangers of old.

it can be a gentle nurse administering something cool, calming for a fever that seems infinite as space and deep as time. or a punishing hot hand slapping blood into your cheeks, hot hot hot; and nothing before you but more melting asphalt, steam rising into suffocating air. unpredictable wind; i take what i get. so i lay down this day, to hear its news.