Old Windmill Poem by Roy Ballard

Old wind mill
The cheerful sky is tufted white today;
reluctantly the clouds move east to west
as if the mill were waving them away
it whirls its windsails like a thing obsessed.
‘Turn anticlockwise at the wild wind's will! '
the strong compulsion it cannot deny.
A coloured calm with every wavelet still,
the millpond surface makes another sky
where east to west the lazy clouds still pass
but clockwise now the fickle sails revolve
for there we see them through another glass;
as mirror images they now resolve.
Some things persist when viewpoints are reversed
but others change, for better or for worse.