Merie Kirby

I sink into the earth where I’m set down, 
mineral roots seeking community, tentative 
among all the deep prairie taproots, slow 
to mingle and entangle. Tectonic plates of home 
shift thousands of miles away, vibrations passed 
root to root through granites, sediment, 
limestone, sandstone, through ice plant and sagebrush, 
fir and aspen, cactus and sunflower, 
willows, waving grasses, mixed with hoofbeats,
train clatter and road noise and waterfall and finally 
the letters that reach me are so garbled and cross-written 
by so many hands that the only words that can be read 
say home, home, home, and when I write back 
everything will say I am, I am, I am.

Merie Kirby grew up in California and now lives in North Dakota. She teaches at the University of North Dakota. She is the author of two chapbooks, The Dog Runs On and The Thumbelina Poems. Her poems have been published in Mom Egg Review, Whale Road Review, SWWIM, FERAL, Strange Horizons, and other journals. You can find her online at www.meriekirby.com.