A wind blows when we die
For each of us owns a wind
/Xan poem
I never knew I'd be wind, when I died—a warm wind
on my way home from the islands—a light breeze
off the lake—breath in my grandson's lungs
as he speaks to the crowds on this—
his election night. Does he know this is me—
touching his face and the faces of those who never believed
they'd see the day. Who'd have thought I'd be breath
in the bodies of so many strangers; who'd have thought I'd be music,
sweet as the sound of the slack key guitar, or that I'd become
an ancestral spirit in the land where they know how to feed
the dead—they're roasting four bulls, sixteen chickens,
some sheep and goats, to feast the one
who belongs to us all—to the Kenyan village
of his grandmother Sara, to the spirits of his father and mother, his black
and white grandfathers, to the ones who are laughing and crying in Grant Park.
In the land of the dead— nothing is over—we still wander, still worry
take pleasure, make trouble, demand our portion
of beer, of drumming, of dancing all night. I say to you living—
though I've drifted away, though I'm only a sigh—an ex-
halation—I can feel your whole world shift—
though I'm only the faraway sound
of a slack key guitar…
There is a place in poetry where the spiritual and the political meet. In the “Deep River” Writing Circle I lead at the SF Jung Institute we visit that place, read poems aloud, and write under their influence. It was there that a phrase from a South African aboriginal poem—“a wind blows when we die”— captured me. It was there that the spirit of Obama's grandmother came to me.
Politics is a life and death matter in my history— my parents fled Nazi Germany. I feared a slide into fascism during the Bush years. As I watched Obama on TV, speaking to the crowds in Chicago after his election, I realized how grateful I am for an unassuming woman's love for her grandson.
The Obamas' home is not far from my mother's in Hyde Park. I know Chicago weather—that mean wind from the lake. A balmy breeze on a November evening? What else could that be but his grandmother's wind from the islands, a wind that is changing America?
- Naomi Ruth Lowinsky
Naomi Ruth Lowinsky keeps company with ghosts. They show up in her poems, and several , including Sappho, have a lot to say in her forthcoming memoir: “
The Sister from Below: When the Muse Gets Her Way.”
Her poems are widely published, most recently in
Runes,
Texas Review, and
Weber Studies. In her day job she is a Jungian Analyst.
