#fiction/publish ![[IMG_5162.jpg]] The wind kept time. The wind was a constant, always pushing, always persisting. It was a pressure, a fact of nature. Yet every few seconds, or minutes maybe, it let up slightly. There were moments that marked a faint belief that it would let up, that it could be fought. Then, it would come back immediately and teach you that it kept on, it kept moving, it kept being. There is no letting up the constant that is the wind. The wind comes in flavors. A cold wet wind seeped life threatening poison into my core. It is a toxic wind that forces me to seek shelter; I have to hide from that wind immediately, or I will die. A cool but dry wind reads the forecast of the winter. As it turns the pages flapping on the ends of the trees, the leaves tell of my coming crisis. This wind makes me stop the harvest and build my fortifications against the coming starvation, the freezing, the blinding. A warm dry wind carries the late summer harvest poetry. It chants perfect conditions for berries, mushrooms, and hunting. I rhyme the freedom to be out all night, the stanzas guide me to downwind perches overlooking a game trail, and wait smiling and joyous. A warm wet wind hums the introduction to the songs of summer storms. The percussions follow, kettle drums building and falling, rolling over the low hills that surround me, until the symphony that is all the power of nature crashes, flashes, and explodes. The wind will erase my existence. Any signs of my passing are filled in by the sands held in the hourglass of the wind; it is a constant driving force to rid the countryside of my presence. The wind sands the edges of rocks and trees that I have marked. The wind fades any tattoos my foot trails have made on the surface of the land. I will be destroyed by this wind. I am an ephemera, the wind keeps time. Lon Setnik August 29, 2024 Livingston, Montana %% #note/sharing