WIND IS A DANCE

A lyrical meditation on winds, from gentle breezes to hurricanes and tornados.

As multicolored leaves and bushes join a cast of young people of diverse skin color and body shape to dance balletically through Bisaillon’s increasingly swirly outdoor scenes, Shumaker offers both free verse appreciations and brief prose descriptions of wind types. After framing a general definition in terpsichorean terms—“Warm air leaps high, while cool air bows low”—the author progresses from a light breeze to helpful tailwinds that propel a soccer player to “ornery” headwinds encountered by a cyclist and on to more severe derechos. Finally, readers see a tornado doing little visible damage to a set of scattered houses in the art despite “twisting, turning, tearing up / everything in its winding path.” So, the author concludes, “How would you describe the wind today?” Readers eager to discover more about this inescapable atmospheric phenomenon will find further information about each kind of wind’s origin and characteristics in an afterword, which caters to budding meteorologists with a note on how anemometers work, some record-breaking blows, and a chart of the Beaufort scale.

Downplaying wind’s violent potential, a series of pirouettes both airy and informative.