remembered to the land

The day I read:

“the land remembers you, even when you are lost,”

I stopped,

lowered the book,

and wept for every speck of dirt

left behind in places where I left my name,

ragged and bleeding,

while newly, unfurled leaves of wild strawberries –

heart berries –

wrapped themselves around those ragged edges to hold me fast

so I would not disappear.

 

The land who remembered me,

remembered my bare back on thin blankets,

the delicate summer evening I bargained my virginity

for “coolness.”

 

It remembered deep February nights –

beyond frigid –

when Aurora Borealis crackled my name to Sky Father and all the Star People.

My dog and I audience to the magnificence of light against dark.

 

I had lost myself from those days

when that land daily whispered how deeply I was loved

I had lost the voice of those ruddy Mountain Ash guarding the house –

then twigs –

now sentinels so wide I cannot embrace them

and touch my fingertips around the other side.

 

Upon my return,

to bring my mother home:

ashes to ashes

dust to dust;

those heart berries were the only ones to know me…

that tamed land now wild again…

I could hear my name –

faintly –

in those grasses,

as in the days when I was certain no one did.

 

Blessed be those little leaves

and the lands who hold us closest.

(c) r. l. elke