Badgers and Hedgerows

Badger and Straight Pine

Are medicine cousins 

****

Inhale four, five, almost six 

Exhale the same 

Climb the edge of my childhood mountain 

This terrain so familiar 

These boulders strewn across the madrone ridge could be the left over scatter shot of Artemis

I was here as a child last time 

Skinned knees and cheap cotton

Lungs equal parts soot and nickel 

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I slept nestled in the belly of a granite boulder- hidden from view back from from the trail ***

I'd forgotten sometimes you have to go all the way to the top 

before the voices fade 

And the people who look for you give up aginst the twilight and mosquitos

--

Today I ran by

Surprised and remembering an almost forgotten 

Instant nearly thirty years ago when I crouched in the same rocks

Listening to the sounds of the quieting forest and ascending moon

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The grey junkie haze as weeks of overlapping yesterday's tomorrow press against the window of forever and I can't quite see the peripherial margins as they grey out against my car payment and my ex wife's cantaloupe tits

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Badgers and Straight Pine are medicine cousins