Wilds

For me

This journey that I’m on—

it looked different when I was 23.

It was all, love, and marriage, and the house, the fence with the pickets…

And at 38 I find it’s not that anymore.

Not so long ago, I’d have probably told you that was a bad thing.

Back when I stumbled off the deer trod path through the hardwoods,

and got lost in the brambles.

Back when I was caught in the briars.

But now,

out here,

in the wilds—

There’s the fear of (hushed breath)

“lost.”

And the tensing at the coyote howls to the waxing moon.

There’s the runnin’ from the banshee cry of the screech owl.

 Momma taught me about her.

I thought a woman was being murdered and ran like hell to the house.

“It’s just screech owl, Trey.

She scares the hell outta me too.”

There’s the quiet of the wind as she whips the poplar branches,

and blows the dandelion seeds like a wish cast from a loose grasp,

and the chill she carries when fall hints she’s comin’.

There’s the climbing of the big gray rocks, old as time, at the creek bed.

There’s the endless loops of the timber rattler in a tree hole—

and the ole horn owl's hoots far off some place in the woods.

There’s the possum’s ugly cute (dead or nappin’ who can say?) in the wildflowers' bed.

There’s the nuthatches climbing upside down on the tree bark,

and big, white, billowing clouds

gliding overhead through the clearing.

There’s the smoke line moving toward heaven from yesterday’s campfire—

smoke always moves the same, have you noticed?

There’s a million, billion stars that belong both to me,

and to worlds that are worlds away.

There’s the deer path I’m on.

And there’s “lost as last year’s easter egg.”

And there’s a freedom in being the lost thing—

that someone someday finds.

There’re pickets at 23.

And then the briars—

so many briars.

And then saved,

by 37.

And then—

the wilds—

the wilds of 38.

There’s adventure ahead you forgot once,

but you remember now, on the path.