To Pasture

And what if I'm not a poet? Inside my mouth is a stone for every time I wanted to live. Every time I count them, I pick my way through burr and bramble. Every time I open the gate—an animal let out to pasture. It’s true. I'm running for it. My life spread out in front of me like a herd, in pieces, and a poem is a sunrise I go to. Arms wide, a thousand bodies open, running for a field I want to remember. Was it enough to say that I was only trying to hold on? To a moving river, to cradle the earth in my hands, watch the adage fall halved from my mouth. Was I ever a poet? I don’t write anymore. I suck salt from stones, savor every time I’m fed from open palms, friends coaxing out the animal I was always meant to be. The poem is not what’s written. It’s what I gather on my way. What I collect in a jar on the windowsill. What catches the light. What I press to my ear. What says, Whatever else, this is my life. A field of cattle running. I don’t know where they’re going, and I have no language to call them home.