gale ovenbird As fall waxes towards winter the wind tells a coming of age story, growing into gales that strip the last leaves from the trees’ tresses. I lean in to hear the rasping tale it tells as its rough tongue grooms the river grass. When I was small I loved the wind’s force, like a hug travelling in off the water. I would stand with my face to its wild breath and tip forward on my toes, believing it might be strong enough to keep me from falling. It met me one October when I walked the edge of the cliffs of Stonehaven. My grandmother had died only months before and, somehow, she was in the wind there. I felt her around me like a shawl made of sky. I heard her in the hungry crash of the North Sea meeting rock. And I knew, in a place within me that existed before language, that my first child was waiting for a door into the world. My grandmother was holding her hand and she set her loose into the gaoth_mhòr, sending me an embodied fragment of the future. I put my trust in the hoolie’s strength, my body leaning past the tipping point, and I had no idea, in my naive joy, how far there was to fall. 251024 what's it to you? who go blather from