Home Free


In Winter, I lay shivering on the hood of a battered Camaro
and the wild geese called to me,
raucous voices besieging me, out of tune with the car’s radio.
They winked at me through the smoke unfurling from my lips,
a scourge of sorceresses skimming the moon’s gentle luminosity,
sounding joyous Freedom.
I listened and I dreamt.

Spring is when the blackberries bloomed;
snowy blossoms dressed up the brambles,
glistened in the morning sun.
Their beauty made my heart soar,
believe that Freedom must live in the newness of birth,
the daintiness of opening petals.
But I was also afraid -
with enough rain, come Summer,
I would be chained to the fruit’s harvest,
my fingertips pricked and bleeding.

It was Autumn
when I left and the trees cried,
showering my path with moody color.
Did they wish to accompany me into the great unknown Freedom?
What stamps might their trunks boast that mine would not?
I abandoned them there, forlorn and weeping
beneath the roar of the Camaro’s engine.

Did I find Freedom?
A home of my own?
Are they one and the same for me?
All I can answer is, in Spring,
I now hope for the rain that will nurture my blackberries,
though each year I still find myself waiting
for that night sky full of wild geese -
my winterland’s white witches.

Copyright © 2005, Evia Logue