Up in the Big Wind

The snow didn’t know, but the sheer could have shaved
the shapes off your face, you off the mountain, your

memory from anyone in its path. To fall six thousand
feet is almost flying, but this wind could carry you

further before you even knew you fell, before you missed
the parts of you it could hard freeze or twist free. Sensitive

instruments told us what they could, something no one
had recorded before and haven’t since: a roar

tornados and hurricanes never thought a loner could
muster. This is where the high howl sings everything

to death. This is where the sound found ways in
and out of bodies it never knew it could. Elbows, skulls,

teeth, ribs stripped clean are all chimes. What gale
could resist a tug, the dull clang to follow?

__________

John A. Nieves has poems forthcoming or recently published in journals such as: North American Review, Copper Nickel, 32 Poems, American Literary Review and Massachusetts Review. He won the Indiana Review Poetry Contest and his first book, Curio, won the Elixir Press Annual Poetry Award Judge’s Prize. He is associate professor of English at Salisbury University and an editor of The Shore Poetry. He received his M.A. from University of South Florida and his Ph.D. from the University of Missouri.