Leaves have no choice
but to articulate the wind:
aspens like zills, aglint and atilt;
the willow, a lone zither.
Riffling the cottonwoods at dusk,
winds find me cushioned against
the concrete in the open-air garage,
facing the trees, the drive, the road,
the mountains up the canyon’s
other side, until an onrush bellows
a mindless heartless ecstasy
through the empty sack of me.
Copyright © 2021 by Carol Moldaw. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on December 9, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.