Angrily Standing Outside in the Wind

          —kept losing self control
     but how could one lose the self
  after reading so much literary theory?
The shorter “i” stood under the cork trees,
     the taller “I” remained rather passive;
  the brendas were angry at the greed, angry
that the trees would die, had lost interest
  in the posturing of the privileged,

   the gaps between can’t & won’t . . .
  Stood outside the gate of permissible
      sound & the wind came soughing
through the doubt debris
(soughing comes from sw~gh—to resound . . .
echo actually comes from this also—)
    we thought of old Hegel across
 the sea—the Weltgeist—& clouds

went by like the bones of a Kleenex . . .
        it’s too late for countries
but it’s not too late for trees . . .
   & the wind kept soughing
   with its sound sash, wind with
         its sound sash, increasing
bold wind with its sound sash,
         increasing bold—

From Extra Hidden Life, among the Days. Copyright © 2018 by Brenda Hillman. Reprinted with the permission of the author and Wesleyan University Press.