In Praise of Windmills

As a single bird fixed in motion pins the sky to itself
remorse grows freely along the wetlands where compromised waters
breed few and far between flowers of great beauty and the human brain
spews soft gray clouds cloudy with truth

I am that river that cleanses—
the invention of a self set apart in ignorance of its own choosing
to be the not music and the not poison
a fluid dynamic of ceaseless production forsaking the concerned landscape

and a bitter end
I (triangulated) is the makeshift habitat of a different human species
the one that didn’t make it yet persists through many brief ritual cycles
and the avalanche of time

Walking about like this is what summons meaning to colorize the landscape
but then when we all have to go indoors what then?
Is this the seeking circuit of the midbrain or the muzzle of an old water rat
pushing apart stubborn reeds in the dead of day?

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Jon Ward has maintained a poetry practice since he studied literature at Cambridge university in the 1960s but has only recently sought to publish his work. He authored a high school textbook Write Better English, published by Cambridge University Press, and a children’s picture book, Big Baby. More recently he edited MC24: Bruce Mau’s 24 Principles for Designing Massive Change in Your Life and Work. A marketing consultant and entrepreneur, Jon is the creator of Braincat, a software tool to facilitate clearer thinking. Poetry credits so far include a Laureate’s Choice prize in the 2017 Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest.

[image: common green bottle fly on a leaf under the sunlight | wirestock]