Vox Populi
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Byron Hoot: The Mind in the Wind Seeing Where Things Lie
I am riding the wind, surveying the damage
of the storm as if I’m a bird caught on the wind
currents handed off like a baton in a relay race
whose finish line gets no closer. I see I am surveying
my life by wind and breeze, by close to the earth,
by above the trees in an instant of time and the perspective
changes. The damage and what’s left untouched immense.
The reasons for both unknown, the causality for each
equation unfinished on a blackboard.
This flight is hardly god-like though it suggests an
omnipresent point-of-view. I remind myself I am human
regardless of what I see, what I surmise has happened,
what dreams may still come to me. What I need are nights
of deep sleep; this riding the wind is not as easy
as it would seem to be. So often the spirit is broken
when things are clearly seen. So often it is made whole.
~~~
~~~~
Born and raised in Morgantown, West Virginia, Byron Hoot now lives alone in the wilds of Pennsylvania. His books include Setting Moon Morning Twilight: Predawn Meditations.
Copyright 2025 Byron Hoot
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One of the true functions of poetry, of the activity of writing is auto-location. Someone said “I write that I might have more than one life.” I read all of Byron’s poems and return to this one feeling his soundings of the depths of being, realizing we must ever seek to be sure of where we are in our modest appointment of time, and fortunate acquisition of place. “Such day as this,” we might say to ourselves each morning.
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Profound, Sean. Poetry as a means of locating oneself in the world. Poetry as self-discovery. A very Romantic notion.
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