One winter I rented a house, high on a hill in Chilmark,
Overlooking the Atlantic. The sun came and went.
The ocean changed from grey to green to blue, white caps
Here and there, now and then. Fishing boats, bobbing along
The horizon, fell off and disappeared from sight.

Only the wind was a constant, a fist shaking the house,
Banging at the windows, flattening the shrubs, punching me
Back as I hauled groceries up the hill.
One Sunday afternoon, I looked out the window to see
The owner, George Blackwell, in his eighties, bundled in hat,

Gloves and scarf, tilting forty-five degrees into the wind,
Wrapping folds of burlap around the rose bushes. No sooner
Had he started around one bush than a gust ballooned the burlap,
A parachute aloft, roots and stem and branches exposed.
He gathered up the stuff and circled yet again.

My husband went out to help, one man anchored, one swathing
The roses, bush by bush, gust by gust, two men at work,
One in his fifties, one in his eighties. I thought of Dylan Thomas
In the dying light from the ocean, in the rootedness of roses,
In two men braced against the wind, finishing up a job.