Return to the Sea
I did not know it until I arrived
but it was time for me
to return
to the sea
with my toes slipping between seaweed
and running down mossy paths.
Where it is still and bright
in the mornings
and sings soft and golden
in the evenings.
I think we all have our time
when we will return
to a place that was once home
and find ourselves
standing empty handed and new
wondering how we never saw
it that way before.
I grew here,
by the sea—
knotty haired and wild
and yet,
as time passed
I knew I needed to leave.
Perhaps it is as my Mormor said,
“we grow up then out and up again,
then we finally grow back down.”
She was speaking of our gangly bodies
sprouting and surging
then eventually aging and settling down—
and yet nothing ever means one thing.
Standing here by the sea
I know I was a mountain once—
tall and strong as a ponderosa pine
nestled into the parched, red earth.
And yet even then my roots told me
everything flows to the sea.
We will all always circle round
to who we are meant to be.