SPIRIT
Puelche: A strong wind from the east in southern Chile that lasts between one and three days.
Sometimes I lie awake waiting for sirens. Sometimes
what sounds like catastrophe is just the wind.
On the other side of this night are the words
no pasa nada which feels like all shall be
well, yet all day I’m buffeted by the mighty
rushing—think parted waters, prophets’
departures, tongues of fire—and the lake
makes oceanic waves. Trees bend but somehow
do not break. I have hated
the wind (being already made of too much
air), but my mother-body has been turning more
earthen. Across the water—the unperturbed
volcano with twin glacier-blue craters
I may never see. In centuries past
the puelche signaled now is the time
and the tribe traversed the cordillera.
I once crossed a dry streambed, tripped, fell
prostrate, face on stone. It is still hard to believe
all shall be well. How to hear the still and small
beneath all this wailing. They say the spirit
whispers, but maybe sometimes she screams.
Photo by Caleb Miller on Unsplash
