Dostoevsky and the Dissonant Wind Today

Today, the rising and empty wind

swirls faraway sound into splintered

other, as I search through the local trail,

and a shelf’s section of oak stands

after straining up a ravine, while the

shore before, whose opposing bank

held two friends fishing, and projecting

a conversation concerned—from what

I heard—more with the chaos of the day,

than my own bluster and understanding

of Dostoevsky’s dissonant echo of the law

twice two is four . . . Later on the path,

I question the equation proving time

spent suffering from 2 + 2 = this unmooring

bridge of busyness my dog and I find

after listening to miles of trees creaking

like definition about to sever from branches

of sense unequated.

Off the echoes of distant equations that rise

like rejected resolutions of 2 + 2 = 4,

my dog is kept on a leash, here, though

fears the 3 school buses, 2 semitrucks,

and an assortment of vehicles blowing

by a bridge’s guardrail, which our deafness

is secured against, while she tries to slip

her moorings of collar and leash, until

the faraway sound of the chaos of the day

ceases, and we’ve made the opposing side

of second sight, where I no longer question

the severed sense of swirling law and lightless sky

when cutting through the vast outskirt

of land the locality defines as a meadow,

or after I enter the cover of outlying woods,

but see behind every step forward only

emptiness, or 0, once the dissonant wind

dies.