If you were a bird,
you would be
a pileated woodpecker:
rare and striking,
red feathers glowing,
poking in the rotten wood
for bugs.
If you were a snake,
you would be
a rubber boa:
beautiful and harmless,
docile in my hands.
If you were mine,
I would love you
more than dragonflies love summer.
But it is not so.
You are a distant mountain,
shrouded in mist.
You are a wild ocean,
never crossed.
You are another galaxy,
worlds away from mine.
You will never be tamed.
This article appears in By the Breach.
Fascinatingly, I too wrote of a mountain prior to reading this today.
Just for posterity’s awareness, the adjective in the fourth line should be “sharp”, not “rare”. I wrote this for an ornithologist, so it would be a crime to say a species is rare that actually isn’t. It was fixed in the actual Journal (thanks to Heidi’s kind acknowledgment of my email), but not on here. Glad you liked it Jassen! I liked your poem, too.
Thank you, Amy. I am glad you did. You communicate your thoughts so well.