There are some places around America that inspire with their tremendous beauty. One of those places I visited when I was fifteen. I remember discovering wild blueberries, eating them by the fist-full, and hearing the huffed warning of a bear. Running away with our pails of berries back to momma at the camper. She made pancake syrup, which we ate right away with campfire hotcakes.

Ankle deep in freezing clear water, I stood until I could no longer feel my feet to watch a starfish moving along lichen-covered boulders in a tidal pool. The evergreen trees were close to shore and sort of leaned toward the sea. Morning mists swirled and  twisted between the thick deep brown tree trunks.

Huge gray-brown rock cliffs worn by weather and waves jut unevenly into surf, the colors of everything piercingly bright in the gray dawn. I haven’t been back but …

Let me fly away,

toward that eastern shore to

face sunrise, while waves roll and

fold across my feet.

To stand again in clear water

cold,

between slate gray sea and Hiawatha forest

tufted along the beach.

Reclamation of lost

pieces of the heart means

more than anything rediscovering

the fine earth rhythms of life.