How to recognize home
1. They say a week in nature will reset circadian rhythms and that trees speak to each other. I wonder if a tree shivers the same excitement at seeing me that I do when I walk into the shadow of the forest and the cool shade greets me and the earth absorbs my worries? I wonder if the trees in my back yard are too tame and too far from wild trees to whisper how much I need them? Do blades of grass play telephone, telling the woods to call me? I wonder if they are embarrassed for me when I can’t greet them by name?
2. A prairie wildflower, transplanted, she lost her childhood home to flames, victim of a serial arsonist and realized home wasn’t a house.
3. Carigana pods snap in summer heat, raining seeds. Sun bakes. Lake hair.
4. Chinook winds blow but who knew they weren’t warm, just the “snow eater”
5. “Home isn’t a place,” she reassured her mother, nervous about letting go of land, “it’s people. ‘But do carrigana seeds pop where Chinook winds blow?’ she wondered, not having noticed carigana here..
7. Home is known as home by how it feels.
**I am participating in #30daysofpoetry, in part to show my students I am a learner, too.
