When I came west
I had never seen an elk, autumn dun
and bright buff, or heard an errant
owl ghost call from the thick shadow
of a pine, smelled the sharp tang
of wood smoke wreathed in my hair
or washed half naked in the glacial
spill rush of a river half a world away.
I never knew the gut deep intimate
warmth of milking goats, scattering
wheat for squabbling hens, the uncommon
joy of breaking bales for frost-crusted
horses, the mystery of unraveling a tale
of tracks and blood in the snow,
the silk-sand tongue of a cat washing
my stub-nailed and milk-stained hands.
In the remote rootcellar’s dank
darkness, fear crawled over my skin,
dim candle light flickering over
thousands of hibernating daddy-longlegs
that clutched the ceiling in spidered clusters
as I knelt to rub away sandy soil from
strange roots – rutabaga, turnip, beet-
scrubbed them one by one on the riverbank.
Obscure spring soil gave up her bounty
of earthworms shoveled from their subterranean
sleep. Kissed by the newly awakened power
of the sun, I watched them writhe and weave
back into black earth where I planted
rows of peas and beans, coaxed strawberries
out of winter’s wrap of mulch and straw,
rinsed my hands in a snow melt pond.
Loneliness lurked in my heart’s smallest
corner. Once an enemy kept carefully
at bay by city lights I called her out face
to face everyday, tasted her name on my
silent tongue, turned her into an uncanny
comfort, wrapped her around me like fur,
danced with the dog, sang under the stars,
rode wild on a glass-eyed paint in the rain.
“When I Came West” is reprinted from Glass-eyed Paint in the Rain, with permission of the author, Laurie Wagner Buyer.