Chasing After the Wind

By Jonathan Koons, 23

My thoughts flutter all around and

above my head like sun-sparks in

the deep evening skies. I try

my best to catch them all and stuff

them in a jar, but they seem always

out of reach.

Despite that, I feel compelled to

keep on walking,

letting the peripheral thoughts

continue talking;

and so they do,

and as they do

my mind’s vision starts to blur,

as its deepest, inner workings start to stir.

My heart, pounding in my chest

and in my ears

and in my fingertips and toes

urges me to run.

So I do—running nowhere—

the tepid wind streams through my hair,

a bead of sweat falls down my back,

stomach cramping, shoulders aching,

wondering why I care—

running nowhere.

And, all at once, in a burst that burns behind my eyes,

my thoughts settle. They congregate the same as the

falling leaves, with their infinitely vibrant colors being

raked noisily to a single pile. Then, 

As the gentle breeze of the crisp

September air continues softly tossing, and I slow again to walking,

I smile.

I smile because I know there was no point to any of it—

No point to any of all of it.

A chasing after the wind. 

—

When I started writing this poem, I was sitting in the basement of my house. Around me, was a bunch of little crumpled pieces of paper, all attempts to write something for the sake of doing so. I hadn’t felt inspired to write in some time, and for that reason, was feeling very frustrated. About that time, my girlfriend walked in, and so I quickly wrote a couple of lines and put it away for the night. The next morning, I looked at the lines I’d gotten down and didn’t hate them. So, I wrote from them. They wound up being the second to last stanza after I finished with everything. 

The poem, as I see it, speaks to the annoyance of wanting to do what you love, but not feeling capable of doing so. Sometimes, you want to create something, but without inspiration, it feels forced. Still, the desire to do it anyway lingers, and its presence turns soon from subtle to begging. I think it’s something everyone struggles with. Everyone has something they love, and everyone feels anxious about the possibility of being inadequate as it concerns that thing. That is mostly what I wrote about. Feeling desperate to be good at something you love, while fighting the urge to submit to the lingering and gnawing thought that all of it is pointless (it’s not).