You Will Be Found

If you hide from the snow, you will
Be found, not by the conformity of color
But by the negation of it. You have lived
Long in the cave of steel and wire,
Long in the forest of electric hum.
It is the day for you to make new
Memories.

Lift here the corner of the quilt of snow.
It crumbles, it freezes, it shocks, falls
Onto the aspirated oak leaves beneath
That are above the brown crabgrass
Above the rich red earth compacted
By clay and footsteps—whose? Yours,
Hers, his, mine.

And further down, down, beneath, deep
Into the loam, to the rock, to the core, down,
Deep into the darkness of worms and slugs,
Carcass and beauty, you cannot know
Other than wild, wild and deep and wild,
Wild and not-you, wild and pungent, wild
And you.

Artful glistening, mirror of movement,
Wet on one’s hand, the slaking of a thirst
Born in you and denied, born in you and
Abandoned. Touch something that can’t
Be touched and you know it, believe in it,
Feel it carry away the cracked, dissolving
Shell.

At the center is the heat. You have always
Known this. At the center is the mountain
That burns, that shadows you no matter
How far away you move from it, no matter
How cold you let yourself become. You
Cannot escape what the flames say
You are.

Think of rising and you will, into this day,
This time, this place, where you are always
Touched, even if by the unseen, even if by
A leaf shaken from a tree, a leaf hanging
On since autumn that tangles in your hair
To say, Experience this day and the next
Now.

No matter the time of the day or the night,
The place or the position of your feet
Upon the earth, the angle of your face
Upturned to the night sky, and the story
Lurking in your book of dreams, just know,
If you hide from her, you will
Be found.

–Shaun Perkins