Wild One

Growing up by the Trinity River. Returning to land to love and to self.

And now, it is dark outside.  But I know it is there, the world, that the river will hush by and the first frogs?  Maybe.

The storm and the night coming on.  Out the window, I am looking at an average scene, from a work of art I recently saw…no, from a photo I took, when the fog was in the oaks and the light came down in rays as the day was breaking down the ridge. 

There is no average scene here. 

Even now in the grey of evening, under cloud, silvers and oranges, maroons and the glassy olive surface of the river ease by.  The light is coming up off those naked willows like light on a great masterpiece from long ago, when the air was liquid, where it poured into you, and you were permeated. 

The madrones reach out to me with their dark bodies, their curling arms, their curves and their soft, cool smoothness. Long ago, I held them against my hot child cheek, against my muscled belly where my shirt rode up, between my thighs as I would climb.  With shining green leaves on the tips of their long orange fingers, they want to touch.

I belong to the land? We are running together in its golds and pinks, among its long clean lines, under its grey moods, on its brilliant days.  I am found in the layers of this river valley, this home, this planet, this ever changing same place.

When I have ever gone away, a part of me has stayed and waited, watching for me.  She is out there now, that wild child, racing barefoot and sure across the rocks, bare chested too.  She has lain in the sun, moving her book across the floor, resting on her elbows, her feet still, pressed together from bent knees, rough and tough and ready to go as soon as I feel like it. 

How long I had that body like a deer, like a fox, like an otter, a vulture, how gracefully I have played in it alone. I have flown. I know just how it feels to sweep down on the wind, to race down the cliff-side on agile hooves, to hold my breath for minutes slipping downstream, to switch my tail, to leave my nutty poop on the roadside and deck top. Like a fox. By the water.

I think of who might find this.  I imagine my mother finding it, that you mother will know me, your wild child.  That here I awoke, I came alive, I knew.  You would know me, your stranger. (A daughter becomes a stranger, has wild thoughts.  Thinks she’s found a soul mate.  Thinks of driving off the edge.  Fears that urge as she fears a drink, goes to meetings. Lives.)

I think of an ex reading this, of what we lost.  She took something from me to have all she wanted. She touched untouchable me, put girl fingers on my scarred chest in the very beginning:  so full of wonder, so curious in the sunlit closet…and made me, made me me.  Me all the way to my core, the most desirable, incredible me.  What she left of me, I have kept.  I leave with me.

And now, it is dark outside.  But I know it is there, the world, that the river will hush by and the first frogs?  Maybe. 

And in that world?  Are true friends.  On the phone, a friend once told me that, as a little girl, she would lay on her horse’s back while he ate, waiting for her mom to come get her. She would absorb the heat from his massive body.  I listened as her voice came across the distance. I was standing by the river, against whose body I have lain, on whose warm silty rocks I could lay my cheek, the palm of my hand, my shoulder, my hip. 

Who are we, my Local Girl? Like Britomart. Now this heroine, my girl knight.  Your chivalry, your amiable grace, your manly terror, mine.  Your big hands, you deep-eyed, you glistening in the waters, sparkling in the sun.  Handsome, smile.  Where you curve, are straight, are strong.

How you lean towards me. That you are me.