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I am in the chain swing, flying as high as gravity needs. The water looks like the ocean, just a bay. Full of crabs and salt and something unnameable. I’m singing dandelions to sleep. Tiny white daisies and splashing the stream into my skin. I’m running down the trail, wondering what keeps kites in love with the wind that dashes them against the rocks. I am spinning, small arms stripping the air of care. I was born near here, I remember. Lived near here, I remember, as a baby. Dizzy in the rose garden, I bent my body like an arbor, a bridge. Stole seashells and sunspots. Stomped in the bandstand making a new kind of music. I heard your name, Chief Chetzemoka, and knew you heard me, too. Through the tidelands to the cascading mountains, all the wooden boats like a parade would sink into haze. These lands hold our vows when we do not. This grass is full of my clumsy innocence. Under heavy stones I carried, leaving holes in the sand, my baby sisters footsteps sinking into giggles and tiny crabs frantic. We all need beginnings, places to come back to. This is trust rusted into a metallic taste in my mouth. Better than breadcrumbs, the trumped up thumping leads me to my own seeds sewn.
