The wind doesn’t blow here anymore. We banished it by statute years ago and for good measure outlawed breezes

although they are slippery and often attempt entry into our calm environs by masquerading as group exhalations.

We know better, of course, but the effort it would take to capture them would be excessive, and therefore not worth our time.

Things do tend to be more pungent here, but we assume that is their intended nature and not our imposition of stasis.

This morning a leaf tore helter skelter down my quiet street, and I, shocked, took search of the child whose foot

impelled it, but youth have an agility our more febrile minds cannot attain, and he was gone like the breeze

that comes to a screeching halt at our jurisdictional limits, afraid of the consequences we would impose,

and we turn up our collars in the chill wind which we imagine nature would intend were we not her legal master and forbidden it.