3,000 Miles

Somewhere between the icicles and the junipers
I fit in

Meeting my body each day
With honeysuckle
Mary
and Mother of Pearl

Harvesting
These scratching bitter lands
Getting to my ancestry
By pushing back the earth

How I'd love to be the Emperor's butterfly
So pretty and so simply soft
Falling back into the forgiving years
The sweetness and mourning still wait

Eager to reoccupy
My every solstice breath

Committing them all to memory
So crowded with all of my revisiting
The flawlessness

Trying to get back some kind of unselfish photograph
A woman's untainted worth

But every single time I try
I simply disappear...

Only three thousand miles between Islamadora and Point Hope