This is a Wild Place

by Erica Goss

On the last day of winter,
my car, filled
with chaff and spare parts,

fits neatly in its painted slot,
a motion box, stopped.
The little junk birds peck at foil,

and I am called away from my body
to forage for my life
out in the open.

When I was eleven
I climbed a huge pine
and had a vision

of flying into the thin
mountain air; my mother called
my name softly, standing on the red earth,

and her voice was a ladder
I climbed down.
I have seen the sky

in late winter, watched clouds
form the ribcage of a fantastic beast,
understanding that

the world is stitched together
from the loosest of tissues — even
concrete, webbed

with faint cracks
leaves nooks
for the smallest seeds.