There are no borders
in the national forest of being.
The giant sequoia grows inside me
as much as it does outside me.
There is no dominion to lord over,
no domain to survey and parcel.
Rivers course through my veins
and I breathe mountains.
The branches of my arms
reach to embrace sky and sun.
Birds fly out of my mouth,
with a rush of feathers and song.
Far from the concrete and factory smoke,
barefoot in the wilderness, I take root.
We are the meadows, the woodlands,
the rainforests.
We are the tundras, the savannahs,
the arctic plains.
We are the valleys, the mountains,
the canyons.
We are the wetlands, the marshes,
the prairies.
We are…
Alan C. Reese is author of the chapbook Reports From Shadowland. He lives in Baldwin, Md. and teaches writing at Towson University.
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