wild

Last year I observed the way 

a tendril from the cucumber plant in my garden 

reached daintily, purposefully

toward the closest things to offer itself -

in this instance, 

the dependable stalk of a sunflower sister.

In the spring, while driving down the highway at 70 miles per hour

I saw a newborn fawn nursing its mother

in a strip of grass near a smattering of trees.

Being the passenger, I indulged in a long look

from the back window

at that vulnerable pair

not ten feet from the edge of the road roaring with machines

Years ago I was witness to a sky -

after driving miles into the hill country,

after the earth had completed a rotation:

the glittering depths and heights I'd missed in the glare of

porch lamps, street lights, city lights

and I tried counting the falling stars

whipping their wild tales behind them.

Have you seen these wild, untamed things?

Have you woken up before the dawn,

looked in the mirror and held in wonder

your own hair, your skin, your precious face as it is:

as it is, all wild and naked and true

with its folds, its angles and dimples, and soft places.

Have you listened closely

and heard not the rush of traffic,

but instead, the rush of blood pounding in your temples

and the breath that passes hot behind your teeth?

Have you felt the wild pulse of your heartbeat

while in the embrace of knowing trees,

or dizzy under a great, foreboding sky,

or at the threshold of a fickle ocean,

or on lush, green foothills 

alive and alive and bursting with life?

We were meant to feel how the earth shifts underfoot

To eat the dirt from which we were shaped

To know the slant of the sun and the direction of mosses

To climb until it hurts and let our eyes roll wildly in our skulls

And all of it is so good! it's what he spoke into being,

our goodness.

So what if we trust our wild selves

as we trust the wild to itself,

and we don't have to offer anything for

we are already wild.