If I were a forest, I would breathe
right now, while there’s still time.
I would spread my leaves
like a lusting after sky. I’d reach
my shapes, my shades of green
and gray to blue and cloud,
to light, to illumination,
to all we dream this life to be.
If I was a river, I would call
to snow down the shaded land,
welcome it to my body,
to my frontier of wet and quench.
I would sing a hopeful melody
into tunnel of tongue and throat.
If I was the earth of Earth, the soil,
dirt, sand, or loam, I would sift
through the air, fly whirlwinded
to river, to lake, to ocean.
I’d be unafraid to take space,
to move with the breeze.
I would remember I too am nature
and nature is of me, my body
of water, the dusty dirt shedding
of my skin bark is part of the song.
-Liza Wolff-Francis
Saturday's Sirens 