Erin Harer

I wish I could conjure a way to lay this restless yearning back inside my bones where it was once quiet

If I could do that

Then the mountains might stop whispering to me through the cracks between every other thought

And maybe I’d be able to think straight again

To focus on the task at hand

The task of running from the mountains because it is not yet my turn to go

I feel the world calling to me

Demanding I follow my insides

Which have already left without me

But all I can hear is my own voice

Begging me to stay

Whispering, “I can’t”

I am not a tree

But my choices seem just as limited

I am too busy balancing my own weight among my roots

That a step

Even in the right direction

Seems ill timed

“Now is not the time for taking steps,” I tell myself

And still

The necessity for change is not lost on me

The very essence of life is change

In all its glory and destruction

Without it

Lay only still frames and stunted imagery

I have been so many

And walked so differently

And I crave my next embodiment of spirit

Seldom has it felt this out of reach

This far away

Back at the beginning of creation

The subtle rumblings

So faint

I confuse with my own pulse at times

As they bubble slightly

Then simmer

Like starting a car that won’t quite turn over

My inherent knowledge so lost inside me that I can only sense

That at one time

I might have known someone who was once a mechanic

So, that’s where I am

Staring at the mountains from the front seat of my broken down

Royal blue

67′ mustang

Nursing my amnesia

And wrenching within from this overwhelming sense that I am not where I am supposed to be

There is a place beyond the mountains where I am already living in peace amongst the river and the dragonflies

I wake at dawn to pull the fish for breakfast

And let the sunrise fill in all my creases with Bay and Sequoia

I am there

Why just this morning

The soil finally worked its way through my veins

Into my tired heart

And began sealing the holes with blood-soaked clay

With the river in my bones

And clay in my heart

I can be at home anywere

Never lost or homeless

Only changing in form

From the rock

To the river

And back again

On the journey from here to there

I wonder why I always end up back on the road

Waiting to remember my name

Existing on two planes

I ache for what is missing

And for what has already been obtained

Humanity

With its deceptive density

Comforts my spirit into lostness

While the separation of spirit from bone

Leaves me in a comfortable stupor

Could I not see myself sowing the earth by the river

I would accept only this blurry place by the road as my home

But I know better

For each time I wake to find myself back at the beginning of creation

I have just a hair more clay in my blood

Just a touch more sun in my flesh

Reminding me that I am already there among the trees

Each time building upon the last

Until my veins only contain the river

And my body becomes the mountain itself

Only then will I recall

I was never lost at all

Just human for a while