Roots are for Trees

I have spent my adult life
dragging my Self

and my stuff

from one corner of the country to another

and back again

and then plopping down in the middle,

a pouting child –

but then one more jagged run toward the northeastern coast,

flopping down a bit too far inland,

stubbornly finished with all the upheaval.

Each time, I left a chunk of Me behind.

Each time, the landscape of my dreams was altered in irreversible ways.

I can’t find my desire for Maine’s crushed-rock fingers of land

or the choppy gray-blue ocean they press into;

I can’t find my certainty

my roots

my belonging –

or even my longing.

I float, adrift on this giant land mass,

remembering the rumble of my father’s lobster boat

and the swell and surge of the unending waves beneath us;

I have lost my sea legs,

instead stumbling and swaying here on the firm ground,

willing it to be a blustery, frigid day in early spring

on a white-capped expanse of deeper colder water

than most people I’ve lived near could even imagine -

water that they would only want to skim over the surface of,

or, better, look at from the fog-shrouded wharf 
as they await the return of the catch-laden boat.

I sit
(like an empty lobster trap

hung with sea moss, 
drying in the cold gray light)

smelling of salt, 

tears for the home I’ve lost my way back to.