Coming Home

These woods are not the woods I’ve known.
Some trick of light paints faces on the bark,
and branches beckon urgently.
This path never went anywhere before—
now it winds over fallen leaves, through underbrush,
while soil turns gradually to sand.
A vast and endless whisper sounds ahead,
and from behind, the forest answers:
I send your child home to you.
I’m lost, yet coming home. One last ridge,
crowned with dune-grass, hides the horizon.
I’ll climb it, and at my feet—
the sea.