Many Wild Places Across the West

Place poem written for creative writing (and for my dad).

The morning, the wet gray bright morning,

Ice on the tips of my nose and ears, while body is warm in the hollow log

Of a sleeping bag, forest green;

Limbs coiled about themselves like tree roots

Made it through the solid cold of the night like dark, soggy soil.

The ground is hard, tooth marks in my back

From the one malicious stone squashed beneath layers of body and canvas.

Too cold for waking, too cold to draw back into sleep

Best to pretend for two minutes that feel like fifteen

Until the other little ones cannot stand it longer, and

Pop from their bags like wildflowers at mention of spring.

And then there is no shady chance of sleeping.

The day has begun ahead of time, right on schedule.

When I was a little one, I woke later

My father was gone, and his footsteps muttered of dust and sticks and gravel outside the tent.

I would worm from my sleeping bag after a brief hibernation,

Slough it off like a snakeskin charged with static

Teeter past the rectangle homesteads belonging to brothers and sisters, half-waking;

My little sock feet made the canvas crinkle loud.

I sat at the foot of my mother’s bed and pulled on my shoes, hasty, meticulous,

Then coaxed the flimsy zipper up to greet the fresh day.

I remember camp chairs, log seats, and cold metal benches

Orange morning fire throwing sparky sleep from its eyes

Such warmth, such unimaginable warmth

Thank you, Dad, every time.

Every time I would sit, knees and ankles huddled together

Sucking the heat from hot chocolate and fire pit

I watched him pick chopped logs from the stack and hand them to the fire

Watched him unload from the car the breakfast things

Watched him in his coat, black or navy blue

Marveled at how he knew things, packing things and fire things and tent things and sleeping bag things

Wondered how he warmed the hot chocolate and built the fire, every time, with no one

But the freshly split morning outside the tent to greet him.