Homecoming
Through cirrus clouds spread thin as stretched cotton
glued to paper for woolfell on lost sheep
in Sunday school, terrain unforgotten:
the Columbia, wild, dark, and deep,
strewn like scrapped satin between strips of pine;
the old house on the hill off the highway;
the water-logged hills that fed my bloodline
where kin now rest in a womb of decay;
the dam, salmon, paper mill, evergreens
all ancient guardians, once at odds, nod
to acknowledge a homecoming of grief
through layers of atmosphere, holy sod,
and troubled time.
I step out into air
thin as paper, strands of woolfell and prayer.
Lindsay Younce Tsohantaridis was born and raised between the mountains and ocean in the Pacific Northwest but now writes from the Ohio River Valley. Her work has been published in Dappled Things and Salamander.
Amethyst Review 