Finding Me

hesitant, the daffodils

fall back as if they know their kind

is alien here, in the

preserved greenstone steppes once home

to trilobites and scaly

invertebrate worms. only

the hardiest flowers grow

here, those that can make a home

forcing roots through iron-hard

gray granite, or against

the base of stunted jack first.

springtime, and no yellow blooms

against the thin grasses, just

blue and purple flowers spring

from the glacial plains, broken

intermittent by maroon

columbine. sparrows search the

ground to find scattered seeds and

berries among the sparse plants,

among flowers that first bloomed

long before birds sprouted wing.

Holly Day is a travel-writing instructor living in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with her husband and two children. Her most recent nonfiction books are Music Theory for Dummies, Music Composition for Dummies, and Walking Twin Cities.

Red dust and miles
The desolate horizon holds me, a screaming pip
Minuscule, diminishing
In a barren, sterile grasp:
Gravity, the weakest force, my enemy forever
All eyes of the vast silence, and swarming windstorms
Cliffs and mesas, and the scattered rocks and gullies
Watching me
Stark, defined, devoid, in the cold and caustic light
And dust, fine like silt, in every crack and seam!
It has occurred to me, I could look back
And see my place of making
A blue-green glimmer, I recall it well
Inset in the arching crown of stars
If but only for a word, a signal, I would do so
I would look back
It has been silent now, for a very long time
I think I am finally, truly alone
The voices, the tricks and ticks and tightbeam data transmit
The digits flipping quick electrons between
A yes and a no
No more
Just silence
And stillness
It has been silent now
For a very long time.

Josh Wilson, 2004