I Went Home to Wildflowers: Collaboration with ccawley

NH:

Slow rains cause a discernible ache
as we contemplate southern winds that blow
without us there to feel it on our upturned faces.

I went north while she went northwest, in search of
something better to believe in than what we'd discovered so far,
a place that could hold creativity without crushing its source.

The prairie can be such a cruel educator,
a hard taskmaster to those who choose to inhabit its realm,
requiring backbones that cannot be bent under its raging.

Once, I stood straight and tall under a waning sun.
The years have shrunk me, made me see the soil
from a more humbled stance.

Too fair for harsh lights, too quiet
for the noise of an unforgiving city, I struggled for my release.
I found freedom waiting under a Nebraska moon
where trees rise up from fertile earth with a subtle plan
to fill the sky with green.



cc:

She went northwest in search of something better.
Instead, slow rains coughed from Pacific temperaments,
caused her joints to ache for prairies so wild, capped
by sunset moons, red dirt rolling familiar,
and she rode piggy back.

She went northwest to believe in the undiscovered
sky green wilderness, vineyard rows like roads returning
to Eden, but weathered branches of ancestral lawns
possess her wilted bones' perception
where trees rise up from fertile earth's plan
to fill the sky with green.



NH:

As a child, I dreamed of ocean's wilder songs,
not understanding this pulling away from shore. I went to its depths
and wept with hard-earned knowledge. I went home
to wildflower fields, needing slow sighs from shells to soothe me
when slumber evaded my grasp.

Always, the forest whispered to me of evolution. I listened,
and planted, reaping the harvest of memories.