The West Wind

The West Wind is a banker in a smart navy suit and a tie. His dress shoes clack on the pavement; he’s got someplace to be, always someplace to be, rushing to the sidewalk, the subway, the elevator, checking his gold Rolex watch. Mustn't be late. 

He’s American, of course, but sometimes he thinks he remembers Ireland, the bluish country from the stories his mother told when he was a kid growing up in New York City with a slingshot and a pocket full of rocks and the world at his feet. Who was Mother, anyways? Her apron, maybe, the stained one that smelt of fish and soap from the laundromat downstairs. Was she a woman or a painting, with the rosary wound around her fingers, the Irish Bible she’d clutch to her chest? He recalled lifting it off the shelf a few times when he was little, running his fingers over the thick pages covered in words he didn’t understand. There was a water stain on page 121 shaped like California, not that he knew where California was then. His sense of the world lay in the city, his city – in the cigarette smoke wisping from back alleyways, the sunset breeze atop the skyscrapers, the stinging gusts of wind off the Hudson, leaving his cheeks raw and his eyes full of wonder. The equator had never called to him like it did his father, who would beckon him over to show off the latest Floridian postcard he’d received from their richer relatives, all bright colors and palm trees swaying next to a warm ocean. No, he loved the allure of the cold, the endless turning of the seasons like a merry-go-round covered in snow. 

But there’s no time for that now; his days are numbered like everyone else’s, and stopping to smell the roses or even the scents on the wind has become an afterthought to his hurry. Always hurrying, always in a rush, no time to stop, no time to stop. The West Wind moves fast, blowing through the narrow streets without even a glance back to see what he’s missed, chilly and tasting of gasoline and better times. He’s got someplace to be, and he won't ever get there.