in defense of the wind from the west

sure, last night the sunset nova’d
into tiger-striped ripples,
and i guess the leaves lit translucent

looked nice. you often smell of corn,
west wind, from iowa, from earth,
from a farmer who talks to his tractor

as if it were his wife. she said
she wanted to be the wife
of water, the bride of children

sailing optimist dinghies on sunday
at noon. but the storms you pilot
are ridiculous as flashbulbs,

flat as a postcard months old.
one night in rain, she watched the sky
melt into bile, waiting for your tornado

to fold our words into origami,
to buzzcut the october cornfields
into pinpricks the songbirds could land on,

hungry with no hope of migration.