Hi. I’m Chera Hammons, a poet from Amarillo, Texas, here for Poets on the Plains. It’s a beautiful morning and the birds are singing. The wind is blowing, too, as it nearly always does across the Llano Estacado. Today, I’ll be sharing a poem about wind written by someone who knows it well: Lubbock, Texas-based poet Curtis Bauer.
Curtis directs the Creative Writing Program at Texas Tech University. He received his MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. He is the author of ten books of translation from the Spanish and three original poetry collections, most recently American Selfie from Barrow Street Press, also published in Spanish translation. He has done several more translations, too, which are scheduled for release throughout 2025 and 2026.
It’s my pleasure to share with you Curtis’s poem “Lines to a Friend in a Less Windy Place.” This is a poem which recognizes that the wind here is almost a personality itself. It has its own moods and quirks. There’s nothing to stop it or slow it down. Have you ever tried to describe the wind here to a person in another part of the country? People who have never lived here can’t fully understand the prominence wind has in our lives and plans, or the way we learn to live alongside it. We must often work against the wind or, perhaps, despite it. I chose Curtis’s poem because it’s so poignant and relatable.
Lines to a Friend in a Less Windy Place
Today I still don’t know
how to fly a kite, or let it
be flown, picked up
and assaulted by the gust
constant as sun rise
in this south that isn’t
south for those who live
here. I haven’t been swept
away either, by any face
or woman’s bare shoulder,
not even spring budding
again after a late freeze,
even though it’s more beautiful
the second time around. Like
that woman you told me about
who smiled once when you
met, and once when you both
turned to admire the distance
between you. She must have
had beautiful eyes, looked
at you without blinking,
squinting out any dust
that would be flying here.
“Lines to a Friend in a Less Windy Place”
Used with permission.
This poem caught my attention immediately because I tried several times, in my younger years, to fly a kite. I was not successful. In part, this was probably because, in my naivete, I believed that the windier the day was, the better. So, I picked the windiest days on which to try it. In actuality, according to the American Kitefliers Association, the ideal wind speed for kite-flying is between 8 and 15 mph, somewhere between a light and moderate breeze. Experienced kitefliers know that is much more difficult to fly a kite in a 25 mile-per-hour wind.
So, like the speaker of the poem, I too have failed at kite-flying, and I have found myself bracing against life’s gusts far more than I have learned to adapt to them. I, too, have thought about how strange it is that we live in a place that isn’t known by any proper direction, so far north of the region known as North Texas, in a state that is south and west but more western than southern. The directional orientations here sometimes feel like a language only we know how to speak. We understand them even when they don’t make sense.
One thing I appreciate about this poem are the lines about “spring budding again after a late freeze,” how it’s “even more beautiful the second time around.” How many times have I planted flowers too early because of my own impatience, just to see them succumb to a late frost? How many times have I seen blossoms freeze on the peach tree because the tree believed that winter was over, and that a spell of milder weather would last? Then, when spring weather finally comes to stay, the relief of knowing that it is finally safe to grow is so sweet.
Central to this poem, though, is the idea of this correspondence from a friend in a windy place to a friend who lives somewhere with better weather, who doesn’t even have to think about the wind, and doesn’t have to always be looking past it to find beauty. There is a longing here to know what it’s like to live in a place where wind isn’t a concern, where the dust stays where it belongs. To have concerns apart from gusts that are so strong that only a violent word like “assault” can be used to describe them.
The writer of this poem has no doubt that where we lives affects us. But what I like most about this poem is the way it ruefully poses the question: if a gale like ours doesn’t move you, then what can?
Thank you for being with us for Poets on the Plains. I’m Chera Hammons, Panhandle poet, coming to you from Amarillo, Texas, the Yellow City.
POETS ON THE PLAINS HOST
Chera Hammons is a winner of awards through PEN Texas and the Texas Institute of Letters. She holds an MFA from Goddard College and formerly served as writer-in-residence at West Texas A&M University. Her work, which is rooted in love for the natural world, appears in Baltimore Review, Pleiades, Poetry, Rattle, The Southern Review, The Sun, The Texas Observer, and elsewhere. She lives on the windswept prairies of the Texas Panhandle. She has two new books forthcoming: Salvage List from Belle Point Press in June 2025, and Birds of America from The Dial Press (an imprint of Penguin Random House) in 2026. More information can be found at www.cherahammons.com.
FEATURED POET
Curtis Bauer currently directs the Creative Writing Program at Texas Tech University. He received an MFA degree from Sarah Lawrence College. He is the author of ten books of translation from the Spanish and three original poetry collections, most recently American Selfie (Barrow Street Press, 2019), also published in Spanish translation as Selfi Americano by Vaso Roto Ediciones (2022). His ten books of translations of poetry and prose from the Spanish include the bilingual anthology Fierce Voice / Voz feroz, Contemporary Women Poets from Argentina and Uruguay (U of NM Press, 2023); the short story collections The Names of the Things That Were There, by Chilean author, Antonio Skármeta (Other Press, 2023); Mothers and Dogs, by Italo-Mexican writer Fabio Morábito (Other Press, 2023); the memoir Land of Women, by the Spanish author María Sánchez (Trinity University Press, 2022); the novel The Home Reading Service, by Fabio Morábito (Other Press, 2021); and the poetry collection This Could Take Some Time, by Argentinian poet Clara Muschietti (Eulalia Books, 2022). Forthcoming titles include Your Steps on the Stairs, by Spanish novelist, Antonio Muñoz Molina (Other Press, 2025), Mineral Fire (co-translated with Keila Vall de la Ville) by Spanish poet María Ángeles Pérez López (Vaso Roto Editions (USA), 2025) and The Mammoth's Shadow by Fabio Morábito (Other Press, 2026). More information can be found at https://www.curtisbauer.net/.
