My latest circumstance
is my oldest wound. Everything uprooted
and flailing. Even my name
sounds strange here. Like something

the wind’s picked up
and done away with, a sky torn song
caught in a high branch, a shred
of the light I meant to make my way by.

How is it that in my leaving
I am the abandoned one?
That I keep losing what I already lost?
I could ask my dead mother. I could ask

the years my father and I didn’t talk
but distances are like secrets—
they keep their stories to themselves.
I live these days between the sparrow

and the thrown shadow
of the banking hawk. Wherever I stand
looking out in any direction,
I see what’s gone. A cairn in a wood

marks a trail but stands in my heart
for what’s buried there. Woodsmoke rising
in the still air brings me back to
simpler times, makes me close my eyes

for a moment and then a moment more.
When I think of all the places I’ve lived
I think of all the animals who make it across
the road or don’t. If home is just

a point of view the tree growing
sideways out of a rocky ledge might be
my only hope but it’s the blowdown
along the ridge with the thirsting roots

and the reaching limbs I sit down
                                 next to, kindred.