Windsightings

[Image: Lantern slide (undated) in the digital collection of Oregon State University. This hand-tinted photograph depicts the Japanese god of wind, Fujin; the photo’s subject is a statue of the god, found in the Iyemitsu Temple, Nikko, Japan. (Found on Flickr, and used here under a Creative Commons license — thank you!) That thing slung across his shoulders is not a giant sausage but a bag of wind. For another photograph, see this page of illustrations in a travel guide by one Joseph Ignatius Constantine Clarke (!), published in 1918.]

From whiskey river:

Utopia

Island where all becomes clear.

Solid ground beneath your feet.

The only roads are those that offer access.

Bushes bend beneath the weight of proofs.

The Tree of Valid Supposition grows here
with branches disentangled since time immemorial.

The Tree of Understanding, dazzlingly straight and simple,
sprouts by the spring called Now I Get It.

The thicker the woods, the vaster the vista:
the Valley of Obviously.

If any doubts arise, the wind dispels them instantly.

Echoes stir unsummoned
and eagerly explain all the secrets of the worlds.

On the right a cave where Meaning lies.

On the left the Lake of Deep Conviction.
Truth breaks from the bottom and bobs to the surface.

Unshakable Confidence towers over the valley.
Its peak offers an excellent view of the Essence of Things.

For all its charms, the island is uninhabited,
and the faint footprints scattered on its beaches
turn without exception to the sea.

As if all you can do here is leave
and plunge, never to return, into the depths.

Into unfathomable life.

(Wislawa Szymborska [source])

…and:

Epithalamion

The elm weaves the field’s late light, this hill
hanging from the tree’s roots like the moon
From its shadow and the whole
world beneath suspended.

Roots knead the earth’s thick sorrow.
Still, leaves from this.
From this unshackling, birdsong.

I am a blade of corn where you kneel,
wind and quaking stalk.
The elm’s body a vase of poured sky.

The tree will die.
Someday, the tree will die.

For now, this axis—
what we choose to compass by.

(Hannah Fries [source])

…and:

And I would be the wind, whispering through the tangled woods, running airy fingers over the island’s face, tingling in the chill of concealed places, sighing secrets in the dawn. And I would be the light, flinging over the island, covering it with flash and shadow, shining on rocks and pools, softening to a touch in the glow of dusk. If I were the rain and wind and light, I would encircle the island like the sky surrounding earth, flood through it like a heart driven pulse, shine from inside it like a star in flames, burn away to blackness in the closed eyes of its night.

(Richard Nelson [source (not canonical)])

Not from whiskey river:

Subway Wind

Far down, down through the city’s great gaunt gut
The gray train rushing bears the weary wind;
In the packed cars the fans the crowd’s breath cut,
Leaving the sick and heavy air behind.
And pale-cheeked children seek the upper door
To give their summer jackets to the breeze;
Their laugh is swallowed in the deafening roar
Of captive wind that moans for fields and seas;
Seas cooling warm where native schooners drift
Through sleepy waters, while gulls wheel and sweep,
Waiting for windy waves the keels to lift
Lightly among the islands of the deep;
Islands of lofty palm trees blooming white
That led their perfume to the tropic sea,
Where fields lie idle in the dew-drenched night,
And the Trades float above them fresh and free.

(Claude McKay [source])

…and:

People think it is impossible to establish a system of ethics without referring to good or evil. But clouds float, flowers bloom, and wind blows. What need have they for a distinction between good and evil? There are people who live like clouds, flowers, and wind, who don’t think about morals, yet many people point to their actions and words as religious and ethical models and praise them as saints. These saints simply smile. If they revealed that they do not know what is good and what is evil, people would think they were crazy.

(Thich Nhat Hanh [source])

…and:

Banana Trees

They are tall herbs, really, not trees,
though they can shoot up thirty feet
if all goes well for them. Cut in cross

section they look like gigantic onions,
multi-layered mysteries with ghostly hearts.
Their leaves are made to be broken by the wind,

if wind there be, but the crosswise tears
they are built to expect do them no harm.
Around the steady staff of the leafstalk

the broken fronds flap in the breeze
like brief forgotten flags, but these
tattered, green, photosynthetic machines

know how to grasp with their broken fingers
the gold coins of light that give open air
its shine. In hot, dry weather the fingers

fold down to touch on each side—
a kind of prayer to clasp what damp they can
against the too much light.

(Joseph Stanton [source])

…and:

 

When the mind is transparent and pure
As if reflected on the mirror-like surface of the water,
There is nothing in the world that you would dislike.
When it is serene as the light breeze in the sunshine,
There will be no one whom you would like to forget.

(Pa-ta Shan-jen [source[)