The Sentimental Wind

The dismal brevity of winter's
daylight hours behind us, we amble
our way along the woodland trails,
this day's benevolent mildness despite
a pewter-shaded sky melting the
stubborn snowpack as streams of
meltwater run down to the creek
full and muddy, itself flooding toward
the mighty Ottawa River beyond
our landscape. Above, the silhouette
of a gaggle of geese their formation
boomerang-shaped and so too their
annual migration. A light plane
in flight somewhere in the distance,
its passage stirring the air and
reflecting down to us in a whirr
from west to east, confusing the sun's
absent-minded journey this day. The
cool wind riffles the fall-hanging
dessicated leaves of oak, hornbeam
and beech and threads through our
hair with its coolly benign touch.
You stop, gather me to you to
lower your face to the fresh-air
fragrance of my head, and tell me
it transports you sixty years before,
as a boy, working your uncle's farm.