Wind


My body was the wind,
I ran and leapt over rocks and logs,
bound up hills in a flash.
No one saw, no one knew, but the forest
understood, the forest knew me and sighed
my secret name, the trees nodded and waved,
welcome, I ran and ran for the sheer joy,
if only I could live here, could stay,
never have to turn back
to walls and demands.

I was deer, lake, trees, 
tiny red lizards that hid under rocks
but could move so fast, 
red lighting in the earth,
I was wind, water, earth, sun, myself,
I could move and breathe and be
and if my mother called,
everything would stop 
for one instant.
I would freeze.

Then she would call again,
for a long skinny girl
with reluctant feet
who threaded her way back
through the darkening forest, 
following the sound
of her mother’s 
insistent
voice.