1. Wander

What would a child know

about crossing an ocean?

Bravery is secondary emotion

when you are forced to go.

The movement of migration addictive

a geographic cure.

This leap becomes a scattering.

Scions dividing,

multiplying.

Accents quickly tossed.

Traumas left unspoken.

Pledges taken,

broken.

Narratives forever lost.

I hear you early, morning,

when I am reading and trying

to write about the wildness so distant to me now.

I hear you trickster—chattering, signaling.

You have seized upon the avenue of encroachment

left by our retreat into urban lives.

Along the edge you travel,

You do not blink, but skulk,

your sacred manner Twain’s living allegory of Want.