(title from Mark Doty’s “Atlantis”)

What’s to come was always just a glimmer
like the gleam in Ky’s big black eyes
in a cool breeze when he pranced
and sidestepped and any stray leaf or trash
spooked him. 

Back then, I held on to his gleaming mane,
back then, I was too busy holding on to enjoy
the hard gallop on the verge, with Ky bent
on tossing me off, bent on running free.
He had that glimmer all through him.

Now decades have galloped by in a glimmery
blur. I hold on to the song of a tufted titmouse
scolding Callie, whose eyes glimmer
she’s got a deep vein of tiger wild running through
her striped tabby flanks and flicking tail.

I’m thinking so much lately of wildness,
remembering the woman who appeared like a coyote
in a suburban garden, the woman who prowled
growled inside howled wide and wild bewildering
the part of me that wanted only a bath, a book—

She was so restless, this wild woman, stranger
rising from some deep vein within, loping
along every boundary, hunting for the lost forest
confusing sweat and chaos 
for the tangle of life.

How little I know of wildness
how lulled by pastoral fantasy, and order
I think wildness is loamy, juicy, messy, layered—
more rooting and rotting than roaming.
The smell of petrichor brings me home.