If grandmother taught me to climb a mountain,
earth would have known me long before.
I may have known ephemerals;
trillium and lady slippers,
countless lichen growing on trees.
Instead, she took my hand and walked
to a village of department stores.
wearing high heeled shoes and
a navy blue purse.
I wore patten leathers.
She never knew
mountains, forests or rivers.
She was raised in a house of brick
on a street of cement, ironing clothes.
Today I took my grandsons
to Moss Glen Falls with a picnic lunch.
We sat at the edge watching water
cascade into eddies and pools.
They each shoved rocks into
their pockets and wanted
to sleep under stars.
I would think all humans would seek
wilderness spontaneously,
be summoned by rustling trees,
humming water.
I guess our senses can actually grow numb,
or sleep through a lifetime,
as nature shares her wonder.
Perhaps a child must be taken by the hand,
led into wilderness
with someone who cares about them,
someone who creates a meeting,
one that introduces a soul to the land.
—
Jesse LoVasco (she/her) is a poet, visual artist and herbalist residing in unceded land of both Anishnabe in Michigan and Abenaki in Vermont. She studied poetry at Vermont College. Her book Native was published in 2020. She was a participating fellow of Nature Culture’s Writing the Land Project, with poems in the anthologies Windblown l and Migration and Home, as well as a yearly contributor and facilitator for PoemCity in Montpelier, VT.
