My eyes pan up, up, I raise my chin
whispering to myself, imagine the wind.
I wrote a poem when I was small
about that exact space, right where the branches meet the wind.
Their tiny bodies at its mercy
this way and that way dancing dizzy in the wind.
Each hand on a branch, feet gripping the trunk
I would move up, up trying to feel my face in that wind.
I told a few friends, but what they thought
didn’t matter much to me, they couldn’t feel the wind.
I saw each hand on a rail, feet scaling the steel
listening for the next stop, or the start, of the wind.
Me, and the branches,
(would you)just imagine the wind.
The power is in the fragility, don’t you see,
it’s in the wind.
I told my dad of the wind, and the branches,
and the trestle, and the train, and the wind.
I paused for the praise daddy gives his little girl,
like she’s the most brilliant whip of the wind.
But I watched the breath get drawn out of him,
Lost out into the wind.
“do you like trains?”
I hadn’t thought about this, I’d just thought about the wind.
“people get killed by trains”
he whispered out into the wind.
I was really taken with this poem, Alexa. One of the things I like about the ghazal is the way in which the repetition of the last word or phrase, called a radif, causes us to understand a concept or image in a variety of contexts. I think your radif ‘the wind’ is put to very good effect. Although your use of ‘the wind’ is mostly literal, we see the relationship between you/the speaker, the trees, the father and the wind in different moments. I especially liked the image of the father’s breath being drawn out of him into the wind.
One slight note is that the use of the word “pan” is a technical term related to filmmaking. For some reason, I kept asking myself it was out of place. Did the speaker’s childish eye really pan, or was it more like some other verb? Maybe it’s appropriate, but I share that I stumbled over it a few times.
I notice that you’ve taken some liberties with the formal structure of a traditional ghazal. The ideas in your couplets often flow directly from the ones that proceed them. (There is a form of ghazal known as a continuous ghazal, which is closer to what you’ve done here.) You don’t reference yourself in the last stanza, which is usually the point at which the author proclaims herself. And your meter varies from line to line. You’re in good company here. A lot of poets play with the form. If you like writing poetry, I’ll only say that I really enjoyed the challenge–and the results–of working within the traditional form, so I encourage other poets to give it a shot sometime.
I realize now that the first couplet is probably meant to reference you/the speaker in the present, and so maybe my comment about the use of the word ‘pan’ is completely off base. (Sorry!)
I like the way you end this, it almost feels like you are getting hit by a train at the end, if you know what i mean