As a boy, I remember reading about the horse latitudes. Those were the places in the ocean where - at times - the winds didn't blow for long periods at a time. Drifting in the middle of the Atlantic, sailors would cut loose anything that wouldn't keep them alive & which might weigh them down, that sometimes meant shoving horses overboard to tread water 'til they died from exhaustion. People used to live or die by the winds. Today, we only die by them. That's what occurred to me as we sit closer to nuclear annihilation than we've been since I was a teenager, and as I reflect upon the prevailing winds.
Foul Winds [Free Verse]
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