When that sopping Kentucky air hit me again
after suckling desert fumes for almost two weeks,
it carried a tingling like the first winds one breathes
when they arrive along the coast.
This smell always greets me
as a distracted welcoming
to places long abandoned
and also at places I have yet to visit.
I fear this first gust always envelops
some message I must wait to receive,
a fortune tucked in a cookie
that I am not yet ready to eat.
Nature’s signals rise like a tide
bent to the contexts of our lives
where others turn away,
we walk into the retreating waves.
This time that liquid voice whispers still of places,
murmuring of definitions of houses and homes,
and buried within the variations of those terms
is the potential to define them myself.
While previous interpretations
fall apart
amidst composings,
I believe in this new translation.
And even though the internal origins of this wet breath
sometimes disgusts me, again and again,
I continue to remark
that it is not just hot air.