R. Nemo Hill
'All upright things are bent and bowed by wind...'
All upright things are bent and bowed by wind.
Who taught your hair to argue with the wind?
Be still now. Let this rose collapse.
Why whisper in an overwhelming wind?
Here is the place we built, and here we knelt
till storms arrived to simplify with wind.
Each breath I draw now is a corner turned
too suddenly, face first, to meet warm wind.
How long can one frail singer's voice pretend
that anyone can rearrange the wind?
Each night the tops of trees begin again
the task of ending somewhere in the wind.
Here is no man. He slips right through your arms.
He can't control the volume of the wind.
Bio
R. Nemo Hill is the author of an illustrated novel in collaboration with painter Jeanne Hedstrom, Pilgrim's Feather (Quantuck Lane Press, 2002), a narrative poem based upon a short story by H.P. Lovecraft, The Strange Music of Erich Zann (Hippocampus Press, 2004), and a chapbook, Prolegomena To An Essay On Satire (Modern Metrics, 2006). Editor of EXOT BOOKS (www.exot.typepad.com/exotbooks), his poetry and fiction have appeared in various print and online journals including Poetry, Smartish Pace, Soundzine, Big City Lit, Autumn Sky, Chimaera, Umbrella, Ambit, and American Arts Quarterly. He lives in New York City, but travels frequently to Southeast Asia. His travel blog, Elsewhere, can be accessed at www.rnemohill.typepad.com.