the eight winds - just written
it’s easy like Sunday morning
and easily too cold for April
the cruelest but not the coldest
month and a good time for me
to trace my roots in word and
flesh back to some beginning
that may be common to us all
but then maybe not or maybe
the unique individuality itself
of this beginning is the only
beginning in common to us all—
like I was trudging through knee-
deep snow from a high border pass
in eastern Galicia when my face—
burned by the wind—sensed a deep
spirit-warmth from behind and beneath
the stinging red skin of my upper
cheeks and around my eyes—
the only flesh exposed
to the monster-wind—one
of the eight winds given
Gilgamesh by Shamash
to fight Humbaba—
in words we think were
the first written—could this common
or uniquely individual beginning
be even before all those winds?
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