The Moan of the Wind – Pardee Lowe, Jr.

The Moan of the Wind - Pardee Lowe, Jr.

Tonight – the wind is moaning
doppler-like Rising Fading
like a train whistle speeding past
if it were day and a jet were passing
contrailing against a deep blue sky.
But it is past midnight and the sky
is black. And there is only the sound.

Is the moaning a contrail of some deep
Sadness, of now, of long ago,
of a tsunami in Sri Lanka
or the souls of the dying in 9/11?

And why is it?
That the moaning comes and goes
as if trailing the decibels
on the wind once
were not enough? Is this the trace
of some infinite sadness, that only
God can express – through the wind?

Pardee Lowe, Jr., BA, MA and PhD in German all from University of California, Berkeley. He is an 86-year-old poet from Falls Church, VA. He started writing poetry in his mid-forties and only recently published any. He is fascinated by the power of words to describe the inner verities of aging, nature, humanity, and the soul: “landscapes without become soulscapes within.” His poems have appeared in two books at Quaker Heron Press, and in One Art, Spillwords, and Trouvaille Review.