by Elizabeth Cain
When you can walk a mile
from your front door in August
and eat wild strawberries,
something changes
inside.
Months later you thrive
when the snow tumbles
down the mountain
and the roads ice up
and you can't even see
your way to the barn.
What used to scare you
shatters in the white silence.
Something ripens
in your bones,
red
sweet.
You taste it in your dreams,
remember climbing dream-like
up the old logging road
lush with bristle grass
paintbrush
daisies
to that strawberry ground
that opening.
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Elizabeth Cain writes: In between doing half-passes at the canter around grizzlies and wolves in the Montana backcountry, I write feverishly. I've lived in two worlds most of my life, the last twenty-five years in Lincoln [Montana], where I've written six -- going on eight -- novels; hundreds of poems; hit the ground running in half marathons, dog sled excursions, and ski trails; and sometimes crashed to the ground from the backs of 17.1-hand warmbloods. Words can be dangerous, too, but their power to heal transcends all.
