Farming the Wind

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Here is a poem I wrote a few years ago when Forgottenman and I were driving through Iowa. Since I’ve never put it online before, thought I’d share it with you for Open Link night.

Farming the Wind

We pass a typical Iowa still life:
huge augers sipping the liquid mass of grain
from one of a trio of huge silos.
In the background, a cell phone tower
repeats the scaffolding over the corrugated iron silos,
mimicking nature’s patterning.

Twenty miles farther down the road,
we come upon other Brobdingnagians:
dozens of giant peace symbols rotating in what looks like the still air,
belying the motionless trees in their foreground.
Here nature fuels our technology in ways
that do not so obviously kill us
as petrochemicals or nuclear domes.

In clusters of evenly spaced rows,
the skeletal giants turn in graceful circles,
chronicling the passage of currents that carry the energy
that enables us to watch, cook, travel,
regulate temperature and communicate
without leaving our chairs.

We each become so comfortable in our close world
that we atrophy– venturing out less each year
into the world at large.

What does technology exist for–
to carry us forward or hold us back?
To destroy or support us?
The hugest irony of existence is that
everything is continuously changing:
movement to stillness and back.
Once stopped, will we ever be cognizant of this again?
Ever able to carry our wisdom forward from life to life?

This wind that blows us forward
also holds us back.
Which is the truth, which the contradiction?
These thoughts move
through our minds like the currents through the air,
bringing us to whatever truth we make of them.

This is the truth I find: Each thing contains its opposite.

 

To read posts from others responding to this prompt, go HERE.  To read the prompt at the dVerse Poets site, go HERE.

14 thoughts on “Farming the Wind”

    1. lifelessons's avatarlifelessons Post author

      I know Dianne. And the thing is, I’ve been really happy not having to meet social obligations. I really don’t miss them! I’ve gotten so much done and loved spending so much time in my back yard observing birds and butterflies and flowers.. just the whole involved beautiful progress of nature. Everything in it feels stoned as do I, without actually being so.

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    1. lifelessons's avatarlifelessons Post author

      Pretty scary one. I think of all the kids and adults on serious drugs in the states and wonder if prosperity really makes us happy or do we just go looking for more? Some of the happiest societies I’ve lived in were the poorest.. including where I now live.

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        1. lifelessons's avatarlifelessons Post author

          Me, too, and this sequestering has brought it all to the forefront. Our drive to acquire more has been curtailed for the time being and it feels just fine to me. I know this is simplifying the matter and of course it is horrible that people have lost their jobs as well as the horrors of the virus. I’m just talking about the simple act of staying home. I am loving it.

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  4. slmret's avatarslmret

    I love the idea of naturally generated electricity — hydroelectric, wind power, solar power. When I was a kid, and well into adulthood, I thought that you had to have trees to make wind — that seems to have come almost full circle now as the windmills make wind as they are also powered by wind.

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  6. Eilene Lyon's avatarEilene Lyon

    Interesting thoughts. I was retreating even prior to CoronaVirus. But I still have a full life. Shopping has never been of interest to me. Going on a beautiful hike today – that is perfection.

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