Reg Brewer - Windmill (1925)

I stand where weathers beat my breast,

Where every wind turns round my sails,

I stand where summer sunbeams rest,

And where the winter flings his gales.

Marfa, Texas. Courtesy of Library of Congress.

High on this hill I see below

The ripening ears of golden corn,

But when the winter zephyrs blow,

I look upon this scene, forlorn.

Magdalena, New Mexico. Courtesy of Library of Congress.

My arms, they seldom rest they turn

With every tidal wave of wind,

Deep in my bosom I discern

The grain that I must slowly grind.

I work from morning till the eve,

My years of toil unending are,

But quiet winds of night will leave

Me still beneath the evening star.

Sheridan County, Kansas. Courtesy of Library of Congress.

Lo, I stand out against the sky,

Where the horizoned purples leap,

And as the shades of evening die,

I slowly still my arms in sleep.

Baca County, Colorado. Courtesy of Library of Congress.

Everett Ruess: "Pledge to the Wind"

Everett Ruess was  15 years old when he wrote "Pledge to the Wind," a moving and heartbreaking harbinger of a short, yet well-lived life.

Everett Ruess, Monument Valley. Image courtesy of Gibbs Smith Publisher.

Onward from vast uncharted spaces,
Forward through timeless voids,
Into all of us surges and races
The measureless might of the wind. [...]
In the steep silence of thin blue air
High on a lonely cliff-ledge,
Where the air has a clear, clean rarity,
I give to the wind...my pledge:

”By the strength of my arm, by the sight of my eyes,
By the skill of my fingers, I swear,
As long as life dwells in me, never will I
Follow any way but the sweeping way of the wind.”
__________
published in On Desert Trails with Everett Ruess, G.J. Bergera & W.L Rusho (Eds.), Gibbs Smith Publisher.