If I sat down with my heart
first carried the tender, squishy thing for miles
Walked down winding forest paths
Along creeks and trickling streams
Crawled under fallen trees and over logs
Who’ve now become parent trees to young sproutlings
Emerging from between the gaps in splintered wood
Tree flesh making homes for new life to begin
Padded with rich mosses
Lush and buoyant after many month’s rain
Took my shoes off
Left them under the brush for feet that need them
Let my toes sink into the forgiving earth
My weight submerged
By sloppy, dark mud
Stood unmoving as the rain came
And the saturated soil eroded beneath my body
A nightingale came to nest in my hair
The unbrushed, wild crown of it all
Spores bloomed to fruiting bodies beneath my nails
And lichen spread over my skin like
Flame set to forest
Bowed my head so the droplets
would roll down my nose over and over
Until they carved a canyon between my brows
The nightingale, nestled in
Sings its homing song
The high shrill of longing
And a home beckoning for you
A home that whispers
“Come closer sweet nightingale
Let me shelter you
Coo you the lullabies you sang before language found you
Let me tuck you in
And feed your starving wings”
As my spine grew branches that reached for the heavens
My clothes slowly drooped and decomposed
Shreds around my once-feet
Scraps taken off to nearby nests
Bits picked up by travelers
My veins hardened to roots
My underbelly grew to bark
I quietly waited with time
As it became dense and fleeting
Corrosive and building
Lonely and communal
Until the hollows of my bones
Marrow caverns
Became the comfort carried off by a passing wolf
By then I’ll have arrived
For the encounter with my heart
In the appropriate state of our longing

If I sat down with my heart
After an endless traversal
The weary, squishy thing
Would sigh a long sigh
A rest between the intersecting paths
My heart tries to keep me on simultaneously
She knows it’s tiresome
And yet
A brilliant feat to love so vastly
To spread that love over horizons seen and never reached

If I sat down with my heart
She would hold me as tight
As I hold her
She knows the intricacies of loving two places at once
The soft stepped dance between birthplace
And residing place
Knows each note of the homing song
That I hear tickle my ears
And reverberate in my blood
Can sing the whispers created by
The echoing rain splash against every leaf
And tastes the warmed juice of blackberries in the sun
With just memory alone
This deep well of a place, memory

If I opened my heart
Peeled back the green casing
suctioning around the center
Inside would be a hazelnut
A small, unsuspecting nut
Rich with the tastes of my comfort
Of running through filbert orchards
Chasing a large, white dog named Shasta
And giggling the stories that are made by the mind of a child
whose thrill is elaborate and devastating games of make believe
And of a child whose thrill is getting lost
and again finding that everything is found

Through all these well worn foot paths
And torn pages
Stained books and street found clothing
Is a letter for the place
my heart does everything for
I believe in the end,
It will have all been for you
My first home
The first land my feet learned to stand into
That my arches found space to breathe over
My first home outside the liquid safety of my mother’s womb
The land that taught me to dance
That filled my voice with song
That covered my face with paints and glitter
That gifted me a lifelong sisterhood
That holds the bodies of my childhood pets
4 hamsters, a fish, and 4 dogs
That took my breath when there were visitors in the fairy homes we built
That welcomed the roots of our family gardens
That blessed my tongue with marionberry juices
That provided the ferns to stop the burning of stinging nettle
That is home to the river
That parts the city with the forgotten memory waters of the Willamette
That cascades with the thunderous roar
of a gorge gushing with waterfalls
That was the landscape of my first loves
And first heartbreaks
That grew the apple tree whose fruit was a part of my first celebrated Lughnasadh
That holds the feet of my extended kin
That grows in abundance and bounty
That shelters us with the grand and towering deep green forests
That every 7 years,
a trillium will bloom
That is the home to great teachers
salmon, bear, cougar, coyote, hummingbird, squirrel, crow, raccoon, opossum, chipmunk, mouse, bigleaf maple, oak, fir, alder, ash
That nourishes the roses
That rose the mountains whose presence grounds when the clouds part

Thank you
Thank you
Thank you
Thank you
Thank you
Thank you
Thank you
Thank you
Thank you
Thank you
Thank you
Thank you

I know someday I’ll return to you
I just don’t know when or how
What mountains will have crumbled
What glaciers will have melted
What flowers will have bloomed
That will tell me it’s time
That will have me stumbling into your arms
Or leaping in rejoice
That will tell me it’s time
Between now and then
Is a waiting game
We aren’t quite ready for each other again
For now

I return in the winters to feel your rains
I return in the springs for the blooms
I return in the summers for fair, the coast, trips to the river,
gatherings in the rose garden,
crisps and grilled salmon,
the heat, the babies laughter,
berry picking on Sauvie’s Island,
sunsets at Mt. Tabor
I return in the autumns for the dahlias bloom
And when all the trees on Knott Street create
a fiery, fallen tunnel of leafy dreams
I return to kiss the eyelids of my weary loved ones
When the harshness of winter becomes a weight so heavy
They believe it will never end
I drive up and down I-5 many times a year
A quiet pilgrimage to the site of my sacred heart
Past the dried fields, the mountain, the lake,
the changing landscapes, the ever-growing number of trees
Until the final hours
And I’m itching for the loveseat in my dad’s living room
My dad’s chuckle and warm embrace
When I complain of an aching back and exhaustion
The bed is already made

If I sat down with my heart
It would only tell me
“You know where home is
It’s not far
There is always a place for you here
There’s never a moment that home isn’t with you
It is the place inside you
Where everything feels alive
And full of aching
That stretches your capacity to love
From the edges of the old growth forests
To the redwood in your backyard
You are where you need to be
This land will never forget you”