I am alone here, in this foreign place.
This land that is my country, yet not my home
I guess this is what happens when sea to shining sea is 3000 miles.
Birds sing in songs I do not know
trees, tall with bare trunks and high canopies,
tower over my head.
The earth is light and tawny, not the brown humus that I know.
My feet fall soft upon this path, tan and fine
bones of the earth, stones, rise amid the soil.
I am stunned by sound, a cacophony of birdsong,
so sweet and raucous, sharper than the familiar calls of
the birds that call my temperate rainforest home.
Funny how, in all this space and novelty, this beauty,
I can long for home.
A stone sits in my chest, heavy for the lands of the pacific.
Even the spiders know that I am foreign here.
I have walked through so many webs this morning,
torn them apart, unintentionally upon my breast.
The air, sticky, even in dawns light,
clings to the webs and condenses,
small beads of golden dew, warm and wet,
meet my skin and spread out. I am shimmering.
Long time now, since heat touched my skin like this
heat that is alive, moist, and tender.
Still, in the wonder of it all, the birdsong, the frog song, the cicada song
I long for home, oh W’yeast, you have me wrapped around your finger
No, your rocky crags and gentle slopes…I’ll be wrapped around you, all my life.
You’re high peaks and rugged valleys, the ripple of your flesh.
Douglas fir and cedar, my trees, hold me close.
I cannot resist you dear conifers, you hold me, your boughs,
wrap my arms and legs in your green embrace and I am gone.
Gathered into you.

*image of a lake just outside Oxford Ohio, where I walked as this poem came to me last week.

Marianna