The Dry Khthōn in the Morning

I haven't seen you since the leaves

started changing.

Trees die so quickly

up here, you know,

give up and wilt when the sky

pushes down too heavy.

People are different

in this place.

My skin crumbles off

like Semele in the lightning;

my hair picks up roots

in the dirt

and holds me fast to it.

I watch fog slide down the mountainside—

always slides,

never tumbles or races like things do

back home—

and I think about how easy it might be

to run and to run

and to never come back,

all these fields and hills,

too much space and not enough people,

winter inching across the stables 

when the sun steps aside.

When I come back,

will you recognize me?

Or have I slid into another form entirely,

the twice-born child

of two yankee mothers?