A Windy Walk

by Paul A. Freeman
The Write Idea
Third Place, June 2021
Judged by Sarah Carleton


The wind slaps the pages of my open notebook,
pronouncing on a half-written sonnet,
insisting I desist and pay the gusting some heed.

At the Sheikh’s monument the guitar-taut wires
roar like a thousand clamouring halyards,
distorting the wise man’s countenance.

On the ocean side of the breakwater,
exposed to the surging sea spray, I shiver,
watching the white-capped rollers turn to briny spume.

A single gull flies high above the tumult,
eyeing Poseidon’s belligerence
and a hunched up poet on a windy walk.


In "A Windy Walk," the poet is both in the poem and outside of it, the point of view gusting through in four discrete stanzas. The poem's imagery is striking and spot-on—I can just hear those wires and feel that sea spray. This is a delicious poem. --Sarah Carleton