The River Smith

Memory, Study JS3

mixed media on paper, 2017

Jedediah Smith Redwoods, May 2017

I was running without knowing 

I had even begun moving

to a place I reckoned to be home

Welled from the deepest recesses

of stymied words and thoughts unpenned, I heard my younger self cry out with anguish 
My legs gaining a momentum all their own
nearly tripping over river rocks
as you called for me, and called for me by my name

As I closed in on the distance to the edge of your emerald blue

my pace slowed to long strides, letting the rain

and fog and cold come down hard
on a person I no longer knew
a person I no longer recognized.