Sunday 'Poem In Your Post' Blog Hop!

The Walkers of Hurricanes

I love the people who walk out in hurricanes,
who love the elements we must all join someday
more than the tepid flesh of their own bodies,
who love the wild graffiti the storm strews
over the streets and highways and immaculate yards
more than the pale order of the everyday,
who have tasted before the sweet fragrance
of their deaths, and lived to tell of it.
I love those strange pedestrians - the old
and young and seemingly timid, the mock-fragile ones
of the later years - who have turned off their television sets,
to defy the journalists and pundits and wild hysteria
of the meteorologists and wrapped themselves again
in the worn suitcases of reliable bodies, who have walked
down to the water to watch the wind race over
the storm's flotsam, to contemplate the beautiful confusion
of the gulls surrendering themselves to the crazed air,
to experience once more the calm relinquishment
of their earthly hubris, if for even a moment, as they listen,
now, to the sweet insistence of unearthlier powers,
as they weave through the downed signatures
of willow, horse chestnut, maple and fencepost,
as they walk past the taped windows and closed commerce
of quotidian light and grow grateful once more
for this bountiful life that has just swept them up -
that will sweep them away again with the same hand.

                                     - Michael Blumenthal

Creativity begins with that ecstatic walk out into the wind, and that wind blows through everything, at all times.  I say: Take it on, ride it, let its breath become your breath.  Let the hurricane inhabit you.

Now it's your turn.  Post any poem you wish and link below so we may all stroll through a wild meadow of verse... 

* Bloggers sharing your poems: If you link above, you MUST link back to What She Read in a post on your blog so others can find our hop.  It's common procedure that if you don't collaborate in this way, you could be removed from the Linky list (oh, no!)...

I'm going to shift this to a Weekend 'Poem In Your Post' Blog Hop to make it easier, more leisurely and joyful, for us to post and hop.  Stop back every week and any week that you can.  And spread the word: More poems will accrue for you. 

Let the joy begin.

MFB,
L

Please support the poets who change us with their art.  I have long admired Michael Blumenthal, this not-so-well-known but consistently worthy poet.  I trust you can imagine why.  Blumenthal's books - and they are true gems, I assure you - can be found at his website here.  My favorite is his early Against Romance collection, recently reissued and available at Amazon.com.

Searching for a Focus? How about one of these?
*  It's Get Caught Reading Month, so post a poem that got you hooked on poetry, then link it here so we can enjoy it too! (Can you say A.A. Milne or Shel Silverstein or Dr. Seuss?  Or perhaps a poem from your high school years would suit you best right now...)
*  It's also Creative Beginnings Month, so post a poem that inspires you to create, then link it here.