This will probably be the first small story/poems about the wind as we approach Sukkot.
For now though, perhaps this is a teshuvah poem, a poem about mistakes and growth and repair.
Shannah tovah. May you be inscribed for a healthy year.
Once there was a wind
born in the south
or in the north or the west.
It was born into a grove of willows,
who drank from the river.
The hot sun was the wind's father
and the warm earth its mother.
Alone the wind hovered in the heat of morning,
invisible, but alive in the haze,
it was
barely a breath.
The wind floated upward
uncertainly,
its movement uneven,
as a child's first steps can be.
As it danced upward the air grew warmer
the teasing wind teetered downward
and it met a small branch,
delicate and slender,
attached to it, many small green leaves
holding their mother’s arm,
obediently lined up.
And the wind twirled
and the branch fluttered,
an insignificant emerald tremor in the breeze.
And at that moment the universe changed
as a leaf was shaken free from his mother.
His brothers and sisters looked on
as he somersaulted to the warm earth below
and they trembled with sorrow for now they were imperfect,
their brother lay on the ground below them,
but this is the fate of some leaves.
And at that same moment
the wind learned
of his strength, of his power to make change.
And the wind mourned for what it had done,
for what was done in error,
for what was done in innocence.
Fallen leaves can never return.
They cannot be lifted back to
their mother’s open arms.
And after a pause,
the wind billowed and blossomed
and blew itself away.
As it traveled
it lifted the leaf
ever so gently from the ground.
The leaf nodded its farewell
as they continued on their spiral journey
for that is what winds and leaves must do.
And the leaf danced on the current
and the wind blew
as they continued their journey together.
