Ocean-born, you sweep all before you.
You have become cold, passing
    over ice, the massif central.
Poplars, great plantains, grasses, incline to your will.
You are dry, drying all you touch.
You blow away rain, all its clouds.
You do not know a season, do not know a path,
But take all Provence as your own.

Some days you do not blow.
But wait in the high places of your sky
To blow again with fresh power.

You blew against the Romans'
    rock-cutting, rock-fashioning rule.
You flapped the Visigoths' banners.
And when bishops and kings were crowned
You tore at their rich, embossed clothes.

 

---James Bolner, Sr.
(Aix-en-Provence, 1986)