Day 5 #Napowrimo - The Day We Wore the Wind as Masks

Here's my day 5 poem for #napowrimo. Today was a very challenging prompt, but I feel like I was awarded with the unique images that emerged from the exercise. 

The Day We Wore the Wind as Masks

Car tires ripen out of the marshland,

split cedar holds the musk of lovemaking,

and the Himalayan blackberry vines,

serrated along the paved trail,

prick

the wind into many pieces

of transparent material.

Use them

to cover your mouth with nothing.

The air tastes like winter and frost,

but the cherry trees keep blossoming.

And you told us that things are always

what they seem,

but the tires emerge

from the marsh as rounded animals

that burrow and hibernate.

Ashish’s bicycle keeps the earth in orbit;

the tines of our wheels twang and twong.

Life is short and life is long.

The blackberry tires of patience emerge

from the Snohomish marshes;

       all of them

wallflowers in the charred waters.

The marshes will recede in summer,

beaching

those precious morsels to ferment

in the sun.

In time, the tires will decide

to become the body of vinegar

or the body of wine.

No matter, we will sip from it

and hear with our tongue, the vibration:

                 Life is short, life is long.