The Wind Blows Over ItAs for man, his days are like grass, he flourishes like a flower of the field;
the wind blows over it, and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more.
Psalm 103
King James Version of The Bible
I think this verse is about everyone,
every man, woman and child,
and every one of God’s creatures.
It’s about life and it’s about loss.
It’s about this tired, windblown farm
that’s mostly gone, except for the two of us.
Barney over there, lying in that patch of sun
and warming his bones, is fourteen now
which is damn old for a hound.
He’s a good old boy with lots of heart.
I don’t know what I’ll do when he passes,
except I’ll be mighty lonely without him.
I was thinking recently about that poet
who said he was wandering around
all over the place as lonely as a cloud,
which never made any sense to me.
I’ve never once seen a cloud
that looked like it was lonely.
But then I decided that the poet
was fooling with us and laughing
about his little joke behind our backs.
It was kind of like backwards talk,
like if he’d said, the boy ran off to school
as slow as a black-tailed jackrabbit.
And that same fancy-ass poet got excited
about wild daffodils without mentioning
that daffodils are poisonous.
Hell’s bells, when Barney was a pup
about the size of a Sugar Baby Watermelon,
all bounce and bite, chewing on everything,
he got into the daffodils and ate three plants.
He got so sick. . .that Cora and I thought. . .
we were going to lose him. . .
She’s gone now. Forty-nine years together.
She’s gone. I can’t even think about that.
There’s still plenty to do. I’m not done yet.
I got to help Barney outside now
so’s he can do his business and leave
his mark in his tiny corner of the world.
(First Published in The Main Street Rag)
© Terry Allen
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Terry Allen is an Emeritus Professor of Theatre Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, where he taught acting, directing, and playwriting. He directed well over a hundred plays during his thirty-eight years of teaching. A few favorites include: Candide, Macbeth, Death of a Salesman, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and The Threepenny Opera. He is the author of five poetry collections: Monsters in the Rain, Art Work, Waiting on the Last Train, Rubber Time, and Preserving the Past for the Present.
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