Apricot Press

the nature center is trying to tell me something

i do not feel welcome back here
in lush green fields and proud tall trees
the laughing river with her sparkling eyes, cut streams
too many years have passed since i broke free of the chrysalis
the dirt path has filled up into a lake again
like the drought never even existed
like my footprints were never even there

the butterfly garden is not pleased at my return
i talk too loud and alarm birds into flight
dodging bumblebees once again
trying too hard to catch a monarch
(they never land to say hello)
judgmental, beautiful rulers,
kings and queens of this world
i was born of
have never belonged to
i have no place in
(and perhaps never did)

— and yet i always hold my hands
and stay very still
just in case

wild child, tell me your effervescent secrets
teach me the native tongue of the wildflowers
so that i might ask them what they’ve seen from
staring up at the sky all their lives

you’ve become one of them, i can see it now,
swept up in the wind, absorbed by sunlight
burns bright in your wide eyes
you are no longer human but something else

wild girl, asleep in treetops, alight with summer
unfamiliar with the city’s cold cluttered streets
remind me how looking past streetlights
and air pollution makes you whole again
somehow

tell me, wild child, what it’s like to run and
run
and run and
never grow old