Trauma and the Environment

Forgive me if I stare, follow your hands
pressing the gold-veined pads of birch
to the oak’s russet brown lobes, scooping
up stars of sweetgum, 

curious smile sifting the sun’s shadows
across your cheek as you hold high a mystery,
take in its burgundy shine. 

It’s not that I am puzzled by your practice
— haven’t I just waltzed, feet a gladsome whir,
amid this chorus of color? — but sometimes 

sometimes when I see us out here,
I have to catch my breath
at our bodies unwinding
unburdening 

falling into a rhythm of rest,
sauntered ease, laidback bounce
of a step that needs no purpose
but to follow the songs that flutter sky,
spill from the creek, carry the wisdom
of mourning cloak and chestnut oak,
our eldest ancestor stones. 

In these moments, with my brother wading
at the water’s edge, and the couple lazing
against a shimmer of rocks, and the women braiding
each other’s hair above the dam, and the children,
laughter-crowned, skipping along the trail 

and you, my sister, lifting a sycamore’s
large, toothed leaf, your hands a wondrous shrine 

I feel my own ungirding,
a softness stealing in.

I love us.
The blessing we pass to each other. 

I love us. 

Shout, too, of the Earth, the spell she breaks
though we can’t unremember severance, theft,
the noose and bur, blister
of sun at our backs. 

Still, we hike, we bike, we run,
we dream in the folds of her dark skirts,
knowing ourselves soil-sighed and mineral-made
though sometimes I need to be stirred
by this healing, touched again by this reverence,
given the unfastened gaze
of a Black girl, her small, bright harvest
stalling my tracks in the woods.