I've met this
little blond girl
in the forest
She knows everything:
where the mushrooms grow and
where the arctic foxes have their dens
When I write my
poems on the back of
a train ticket or
on a paper napkin,
ripping it apart with words
she is witnessing me
with her four
and four thousand
year old eyes
I am now wearing
her necklace of
bone and teeth
crossing the water
back to the other
side with salmon's ease
upon arrival
I climb and I climb
I stumble no more
