"I am from"

I am from little sandstone cubbies
Holding plush, holding stories
Nurturing through game,
Dinnertime dictated by the rising tide to meet our toes.
I am from skinned knees and chins and
Rocks in palms
(a fiery high-five)
A cry, and a distraction.
The dancing branch of an apple tree
–– kissed by the salty wind––
sings me to sleep
And waves good-bye to a day of play.

I am learning a lesson from outside and in
Arriving for a run,
To clomp and stomp and step on pebbles
Curve a hot, electric pattern,
Going somewhere, once again,
From a place to a place to a
Place.
To sit and watch the water tumble,
Relentlessly
Stubbornly
Unforgiving ––
Just moving forward.
Realizing I don’t want to be a waterfall.
Realizing I don’t want to go to a Place
Just to go for a run
Just to say I went
Just to get some exercise.
Realizing that I don’t want to exploit an experience.
Using the place for what I can get from being there,
What it can give me.
Is that exploitation if the Place remains “untouched?”
I am tired of reading metaphors
with empty hands. What can my hands do?

I am from bigger lungs than mine
That carry me too fast
Too fast
Too fast
They say
And I smile and I want more.
I’m hungry for the earth
And those lungs
Those eyes
Those hooves and shoes, he takes me there.
Faster.

I am from the satisfaction of little boxes crossed
Doing doing doing doing
Doing dipping toes in everywhere
Where every minute means more and more and
pause.
Sink.
Spill.
Weep.
Recharge.
Return.
I can’t even half-ass a pause.

I am leaning to the need to be still
But from the need to move.
From busy time,
Moving to time well spent
In quiet wonder
Asking “what?––”
Not pointing at it.

I am from a sweaty kitchen,
Jam-filled cookies that
Fall today on empty palms.
The ties who tied in carved out time
Battleship with oos and aahs
A crash, a rumble from the audience,
And a stack of cards too tall to shuffle.
we share the pile.
Many hands make light work––
A version of the word we do not dread.
Eager are we to knead the dough of merrymaking,
eager to set the table for
lessons learned in one eye to another
A moment, with a memory shared,
A nod
A repeated story to teach us a new teaching.
Many hands make light work
And work
doesn’t feel like work when it’s for each other,
By each other.

I am now a solitary process.
The urge to move and run and jump and scream and
Shake my head, my hair,
Falls everywhere, it never sits ––
Relieved to live in motion.
I miss a knee made achy from the toil of adventure.
I miss the safety reassurance.
I miss when she told me she was proud of me.
I am a head of hair
Being told to sit down.

I am the making sense of things that don’t make sense.
Lists and words and
53 open tabs and
Not a single check mark.
That doesn’t make sense to me.
the questions and the meetings and the
Putting people into little boxes
And telling their adults,
The adults who should know them,
Which box they are.
And that doesn’t make sense to me.
engaging in exchange of words
Without presence from either end,
No effort in an understanding,
A waste of words, a practiced script.
I’m actually not doing fine.
And that doesn’t make sense to me.

I am the forty minute detour on my way home from the grocery store
Just to touch a branch and see the same mountain
From a new angle.
I am wasting my time.
That makes sense to me.
I won’t translate the sky to a pile of words
Or a box on a screen.
That wouldn’t make sense to me.

I am the residuals of
apple slices balanced on fingertips
A quiet, undercover munch
While story floats and fills the air.
I want it peeled… please.

I have become the observing vehicle
from laying out the clothes,
making an unhappy breakfast,
A bus ride in the rain.
I am the residuals of service empty in compassion.

I am the Sea to Sky
To over by the pointed neighbor peaks
Shoulders and elbows
Worn smooth
Gigantic hands that hold us hold our
Laughter
Boots
our work.
Our paper bag sandwiches
A backpack sits in small
And feeds the journey. (thank you.)
I am from an alpine lake
The planks that hold our mesh and metal
Meld in gravel tracks
Hand in hand, foot in foot.
A sunburn and an icy swim.
I’ll remember sunscreen, next time.
Thank you for your hospitality.

I am outside that kitchen window.
(click your heels to crack the door)
But I do not want inside.
Behind the pane is cold,
But freezing is the rigid word
that meets a hug not wanted.
Keep my freezing to myself
In quiet contemplation
–– asking ––
–– waiting ––
mustering the ability to respond
Lies dormant on the backs of hands.
tired shoulders still in all paralysis
of an invisible backpack.

I have become the art of getting stuck
From struggling to negotiate
Deciding where to look
––– the view, the trail, my feet directly underneath––
Settling to close my eyes
Tight.
I settle to see nothing
To fumble in the waves and wake
to toss and tussle
Blind
Jostled by the turbulence of running in the world.
I lean this way.
but I need to let go
Fall back in the direction of
A gentle peel of those eyes
To see, to open.
I am going there, I swear.

I am from what I think I should be
The worth of what they like to see
A pretty instrument
A pretty grin
Disheveled in the tiredness of being an “a”
…from the effort of the juxtapose
To a thing
To be held
Is not so warm for an “A” than for
a “they.”

I am the fog the cloud who sits and spreads
Refracts the silhouettes and subjects out of reach
The cold, the soft, the
silent wrap of question.
The arms upturned in the unknown
A duck below the surface.
How I’d like to be below the surface.
How I’d like to disappear for long enough
So ripples run so far they fall flat
Imperceivable.
But the ducks resurface. And so do I.

I am of the biggest shard of glass you’d ever see
I’m a participant in gentle, jolting lull
Alive in the discomfort.
She shows me the beginnings and the ends,
the sorrows and the joys.
I come back to her
to feel myself in her reflection.

I am going.
I am going to––I don’t know––
Nowhere I go is uniform or
Makes any sense at all
(to anyone who strives for such a silly thing as sense)
But in that crevasse where my ribs meet
I know. The going worth going is On.