From the striped plateaus, burnt red by western sun,
dull blades of sandstone carved by the ocean’s hands,
scattered with green spruce, firs, and dried sagebrush,
and waterfalls trickling down slick stone bands,
where I watched horned goats pounce on vertical cliffs
and climbed cave-bound rockslides in the dirt cloud’s midst.
From the Pacific’s rain-steeped tea of salt and mountain air
brewing fresh sprout lichens on cedar bark,
where deep green mountains basked in sheets of fog,
obscuring the ever fading horizon line,
where I fed seagulls at the pier from dirt caked palms,
and learned to sing to pitch with cawing birds.
From the moss and willow strung foliage of the south,
draped arches over murky green canals,
swarming mayflies evading lumpy frogs,
algal blooms coating the surface of the deep Bayou,
where alligators basked scorched on flattened grass
and I found adventure, swimming under docks.
From the snow coat hills of the frigid north, battered
by icy wind that buried broken life,
with only oak and pine to counter the constant white
until yellow buds explode in spring’s first breath
where deer leave hoof prints in fresh snow each dawn,
and I cleansed the Earth’s dirt lodged beneath my nails.
From the east’s walls of trees that locked away the sky,
but crumbled where the world met the shore,
warmed by gulf storms rippling up the sea,
waves disappearing behind the curve of the Earth,
where sea birds dipped where the sky met the sea,
and I wished to wander forever, in distant depths.
From the flat, muddy banks framing the Mississippi,
encircled by cotton fields, bordered by twig-like trees,
where flowers bloomed duller each spring,
basted in ship’s gray fog,where cranes
stood on single legs, submerged in puddled fields,
and I left the caravan that carried me, to journey on my own.
My roots are sprawled and broken, ripped apart in shifting ground,
grasping on to rocks on mountain tops,
nourished with the sea of forest air,
shouting, stretched in webs and moss,
burying into snow until the season’s thaw,
forever fighting towards an eroding shore,
and severed in the muddy flats that were never home.
My roots are crawling, wandering to the world’s end,
and maybe one day they’ll dig in deep,
to find the ancient soil down below.
Perhaps one day they’ll tie me home,
but for now I’ll wander everywhere
to see the world’s hidden coves.
I’ll wander everywhere and travel coast to coast.
Aubrey Wallen Literary Journal and Papers 