Places to Be (a poem)

I sit on the porch of every storm’s roll,

under each billowed face of the earth’s totem pole,

and grin at the thunder of life.

I wait with the umbers of lonely pine nights,

when needles make ghosts of gossamer light,

and pluck at the moonstrings I find.

If you decide me lost, or hidden, or tossed,

all hawk-moth and froth tussled well within moss,

unbound to the dirt and the trees,

you can find me out there, where the sunrise croons

of col, of plumes, of columbine bloom.

And we will grow together again.

—————

“But why?”

It was stormy, Lord Huron’s “Long Lost” was playing, and I’d been teaching transcendentalism at Colfax-Mingo.