The Strange Wind That Knows Your Name Poem by Patti Masterman

On the day she first realized she wasn't feeling well,
It was as though things began to pass by faster and faster;
The corridors moved by like lightning, as they wheeled her around
The new white hospital for untold hours, that she could not
Keep track of, and later her loved ones came-
And that was when she realized
How it felt just like when the wind is blowing by,
And when the wind keeps picking up speed, all the time.

Many different faces appeared beside her
Some for only seconds, like flashes, it seemed,
And often were distorted and replaced
By other faces, a sea of faces; and now and then
There were white or green dressed hospital people,
Sometimes speaking, but it grew impossible to discern what;
And all of it moving, changing, like tumbling leaves
Blowing before the storm,
More and more quickly the surroundings were moving

Until she felt quite dizzy and breathless,
And just wanted it all to stop, to slow down.
But she also knew there was no stopping it
Once it had begun, and as it hit full speed
The world began to tilt up on its edge, so that she felt herself
Beginning to slip sideways, almost as if
She were beginning to fall off the world,
And falling out of the only life she'd known
These nearly ninety years.

It was all happening so fast
There wasn't really any time to feel fear,
As she felt herself literally picked up
By some strangely gentle wind, that softly breathed her name,
Somehow caressed and counted each syllable,
Seemed to know every iota of her being,
Both inside and out; and it was the same,
She thought- the very same, as before she was born-

That same wind must have breathed her into her body,
And deposited her upon the birthing bed, where she came to be
Among those who would learn to love her, and at that thought
She was able to relax finally, and so flew faster than light then,
To where there was no space or time to be recognized,
Where she floated freely in a vast, smooth nothingness,
Completely at peace, and she could not even remember
Who she used to be, or had thought herself to be,
Before the strange wind came to claim her.