Words on the Wind

—Ford River Rouge

I’d walk up the hill through wild grasses

rich with milkweed and flags and make a nest

in the place I’d tamped down over the days

of decent weather. The view was something

terrifying and never the same:

on calm days the great plumes rose straight up

to insult the delicate nostrils of angels.

I was twenty-four and had no use

for the God of my fathers, no use for anything

spiritual. I believed in the deepest organs,

the liver, the kidneys, the heart, the lungs.

Nonetheless as I sat cross-legged drinking

chocolate milk words came on the wind.

Can you imagine God speaking to you

as you ate a little round store-bought pie

on a hilltop in Dearborn, where no Jews

were welcomed, where the wind came

in waves through the wild grasses

that had the guts to thrive? How I yearned

for the character of weeds and grass

that seemed more mysterious and grand

than the words the wind scattered through air

so fetid it was sweet. Noon, May 12,

1952. I wrote it on a calendar

at home and later threw the thing away.

You want those words, you who still believe,

who think the exact words are essential

to your salvation or whatever

it is you pray for? I’ll take you there

on a spring day of wind and low gray sky,

a Dearborn day. We’ll bring two quarts

of chocolate milk and little store-bought

pies—apple, cherry, or pineapple,

each worse than the other—and find the nest

of fifty years ago, and maybe we’ll smoke

as all young men did, and lean back

into the flattened grass, and rest our heads

on the cold ground while we add our own

exhalations to the exquisite chaos

of the air, and commune with whoever.

—Philip Levine