New Publication: Grafting

Published in the Spring/Summer issue of the Aurorean

GRAFTING

Among high ponderosas in Arizona,
I remember Maine’s white pines—
how after climbing them,
their clear sap drew pieces of that homeland
straight into my hands.

I have been grafted here and there,
with the seasons, out of season,
I have loved light rising like heat
across highways dredged through the land,
woken to a broken shard of sunrise
reaching through a canyon.
I am fastened in transient topography
by the movement of stars,
the constancy of things I cannot hold.
The sun seeps up through the Atlantic.
Maine shifts into the idea of belonging,
in longing, as if it no longer exists.
It is like the memory of a scent.

Download a pdf of the original poem here