Wind blows hard from the south in Summer, the north in Winter, catching the sheet metal at its corners, pulling, ripping, and flapping until it tears off and flies away.  So many nights I laid in bed, listening to the grinding and rapping, unable to sleep, powerless to stop it, and dreading the repair job.  Still, I was proud of my makeshift coop in Erda, Utah, and my chickens and their eggs, and the dusty, sweet smell of dry straw.  This is poem is about needing to anchor the roof down against the wind, a metaphor for anchoring our lives to sound principles against the storms of life.

ANCHORS IN WIND

Wind blows noisily through the leaves,
snaps the brittle branches,
penetrates the pores in my window
screen, sibilating angrily,
seeking for bottles and knick-knacks
to knock off the sills
to break and spill upon the floor,
slams my door on its whooshing way out,
where I have neglected to place a stopping cushion.
The old steel on the chicken coop roof
has come unscrewed on its southern windward sides
to creek and groan and complain and moan
until I climb the stepladder with
a new box of screws
to really, this time,
anchor it down.

Roger is the author of Rabbit Lane: Memoir of a Country Road.  The book tells the true life story of an obscure and magical farm road and its power to transform the human spirit.  The book is available in print and for Kindle at Amazon.  See Rabbit Lane reviewed in Words and Pictures.