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?