T. Boon* Pickens And His Windmills - Poem by Sidi Mahtrow

Hey Sancho!

When someone promises you
An island kingdom out of the blue
Where you and family
Can live free.

When he takes you on a journey
Where you are robbed and beaten to you knee(s)
But always offers a vision
Of something better in the next mission.

When seeing a barber's bowl
As a helmet of gold
Which he of course possesses
While beating its owner of his senses.

When he escapes at break of dawn
As he has planned all along,
Avoiding payment of the evening's lodging
Claiming it's a higher authority's doing.

When even his friends
Accept the fact that he is of two minds
And needs much help, of course
Committing him to bed or worse.

In discovering that the wind blows free
As Nature intended it to be.
(Something that sailors know,
And assume that since the winds blow
Its use is, for them free,
And anything not nailed down will also be.)

Having watched the mills with blades attached,
He thought it to be an enemy in want of dispatch
And rushed to do battle.
As Cervantes told in his well known to tattle.

So it is that you now encounter a Quixote of later day
Who enlist your help once again in a new foray.
This time you have only to offer up you savings
And pledge your children's future in the quest of his making.

But before you sign on the dotted line,
Consider what he wants this time,
Look out your window at the trees
And watch the movement of the leaves.
Notice how they move carefree
In the refreshing breeze.

But wait, you say the air is breathless
And nothing is astir without its caress.
But what about windmills, can they do better
Or must they await a change in weather?

Of course in their absence of generated electricity
Everything must wait for the whims of nature's fugacity.
Those energy saving flourescent bulbs grow dim
As they are starved for current as the amps are trimmed.
And the air conditioner struggles and goes silent
The good news is that the roads become vacant
As at the curb, the electric driven car
Awaits a new charge from afar.

Maybe on the Texas high plains or mountains or at sea,
The wind blows constant and eternally.
Oh, that it be so.
For just as it does not always blow,
It seems to be with a mind of its own,
Blowing too hard is well known.
Ask any sailor who has had to reef the sails
To keep the ship from coming about or worse, in gales.

So Sancho, before you listen to Don Pickens
Perhaps you should listen to your wife in the kitchen
Who has to pay for the flour that is ground by the mill
That is turned by the wind (when its not still.)

***
* The 'e' is silent, unlike this current Quixote.