Bruce Beasley

on marriage

I.

Wind’s the medium of air.
It says what in the air’s
stasis we’d never hear.
In the sibilation of its leaving
it says what air would say
(the kinesis of that silence)
if stationary atmosphere
could scrape, stridulous,
itself against its unmoving self.


II.

Wind’s air
that sensed a near
hollow in the pressure

and poured
toward that rising stratum
to hold it fast: a depression

in the balance
of things it had to change

itself to fill.


III.

Still air’s
wind that had its way, inrushed, unemptied
what was left, then settled

into the lull it was, its
constituent quiescence:

immotive, as if straining
not to quiver toward each new
instability of heat along the edges&emdash;
the still of its want; the want
motivating all its still.