So…this was written on a train (if the title doesn’t somehow give that way). Somewhere in the wilds of Norway, which still feels like the beating heart of my home. Some yearnings remain. After years, after miles, after all the weights we carry and let go. We still remain. Remember your wild heart. Yearn a bit more. Worry a bit less.

Thoughts from a Train


the gnarled and yet 
not-aching-to-be-straight aspens, 
forever reaching up
while tethered to their roots below
the largest organism,
still seems so alone, 
standing on the draping hills
and keeping a respectable distance
from one another

a rushing river teases between trees and
gives the snowy foam of passion
a rise and climax as it
dances across
unforgiving rocks 
on the edge of a desire
fluid against hard surfaces 
rutting in season 
and calm placation when 
the urgency subsides

I’m still trying to see through the trees
to find the rushing sound

hard rock faces, lining the tracks
to dark tunnels
where the rush of entry
changes the pressure of my body
and eyes flutter close
the dark and light dappling
through my eyelids and 
I feel the butterfly brush of lashes to cheeks
you’re lying there in the sun, 
now shade, 
now sun
beside me

I am sitting 
with all my desire, 
laying in warm beds
faraway from here
and the ways it will never reach me,
never catch up to me
through windows
along miles
in this cold space next to strangers
known
and unknown

I am heavy in obligation
weighed, like black holes contracting
around the reality they consume

but in my heart
still beats the wilderness
and still grows in brambles, 
and still peeks through evergreen thick
to remind me
that a river always rushes 
cold and powerful
ever cyclical and returning
between my crevasses and 
to the lowest points
of all the lovely roots
of this, my human desire
 
I still remain
wild