Tuesday Poem - Big Wind

BIG WIND


Where were the greenhouses going,
Lunging into the lashing
Wind driving water
So far down the river
All the faucets stopped?—
So we drained the manure-machine
For the steam plant,
Pumping the stale mixture
Into the rusty boilers,
Watching the pressure gauge
Waver over to red,
As the seams hissed
And the live steam
Drove to the far
End of the rose-house,
Where the worst wind was,
Creaking the cypress window-frames,
Cracking so much thin glass
We stayed all night,
Stuffing the holes with burlap;
But she rode it out,
That old rose-house,
She hove into the teeth of it,
The core and pith of that ugly storm,
Ploughing with her stiff prow,
Bucking into the wind-waves
That broke over the whole of her,
Flailing her sides with spray,
Flinging long strings of wet across the roof-top,
Finally veering, wearing themselves out, merely
Whistling thinly under the wind-vents;
She sailed until the calm morning,
Carrying her full cargo of roses.

Theodore Roethke

For more Tuesday Poems, please visit the TP hub 

where this week's editor is Jeffrey Paporoa Holman.  

I chose Theodore Roethke's Big Wind for today primarily for the resilience and hope expressed in these six lines. . .

But she rode it out, 

That old rose-house,
She hove into the teeth of it, 

The core and pith of that ugly storm. . .

. . . she sailed until the calm morning,

Carrying her full cargo of roses.'

Our Christchurch community continues to be at the forefront of our thoughts.  Hambani kahle. (Go safely. Go well. Zulu)

*

Later. . . I'd like to acknowledge Mary McCallum (curator of the Tuesday Poem initiative) today and to thank her for the tenderness, zeal and humanity she brings to our blogging community. Her poem EARTH leaves us with a sense that what's been broken will again become whole... US poets, VesperSparrow and T. Clear endorse this message. I haven't got round all the TPs yet, but know there'll be many additional resonances... 


Together, we find the words we need to make sense of our world? 


Today, it seems to me we're building a composite; a communal poem composed of many parts. Everyone's turned in the same direction and with the best intention; thank you all.