Peter Munro

The length of the wind runs from mid-May to murder. The length of the wind runs from January through joy. The wind runs as long as the right hand’s first finger points to the sun after thunder. The wind gallops prayerward like a horse held in the palm of a rock, no taller than a knee bent for the sake of singing. The wind weighs more than the fossilized horse and stretches from fingernail to praise. The length of the wind runs from mid-May to mercy, January through justice. Unto the broken, dwelling in a broken, promised land, the wind drops a hammer and some are warmed and some are chilled and some laugh and some die. Silently through the nuclear physicist, the wind wicks loud as paper-scraps trailing in the wind’s wake, igniting an empiricist, fragrant through tallow. The wind strikes the wind like rice in a paddy. The wind scatters petals like blossoms of napalm. The wind snaps the backs of malnourished conquistadors bowed down to gold. It is the wind who estimates poverty in moments by the method of moments, who assesses want in units of amass. It is the wind who shakes America by the ovaries, runs the length of revolution, all the calories in a dollar. The length of the wind runts from mid-March to hunger. The length of the wind grunts from Saturday through sorrow. The wind flutters nothing but orgasms and afterplay. The wind numbers seminarians more numinous than semen. The wind is a mote on the wind. The wind is the dust that measures time in footsteps. The wind is the word in the throat of the dust. The length of the wind runs from midwife to marvel. The wind ribbons out within mid-May and mourning and dust is the voice the wind whickers glory, the wind whickers grief.

The angels I love bicker over cod guts and snapper spines. They joust for flounder skulls and pick the bones clean, screaming. Their harsh, fine voices break across my town in a language lost to my kind, thoughtless in the clear now of now without death. Christ, walk down streets paved with rain to me and you drown in my choir, my angels beating prayer under wing which is the want I have not loved well. Where did my weather go? Meet me where my hidden weather went, where praise and rain are never spent. "Requiem" is from a sequence titled "Hard Weather Prayers."

If the sea is a cathedral, a tide pool is a chapel. Sculpins dart under the wind that blusters their cupped oceans. Sculpted by wave on rock, their pockets of salt grow thin from the rain, the suffocating fresh water. Sculpin and hermit crab and limpet endure the sea's absence, the lost comfort of constant temperature, while the unconceived sky drums the roof over their pooled world with litanies of unbreathable torrent. Christ, I have no praise for you. Beyond saying a vodka-wrecked troller and shacks the color of the desire to die, beyond saying predatory snails that glide on their bellies like the penitent, flexing their borers, beyond saying seraphim that bicker exactly like gulls, the shells that are my ears sing no psalms except I can name many small creatures in the world of a tide pool. Christ, have mercy on all things that drown in air, I have no praise for you. I say the tide: Tide! Tide! Tide! I say:Ebb! Flood! Ebb! Flood! I always start with "Ebb!" I always end with "Flood!" "Names" is from a sequence titled "Hard Weather Prayers."