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Replanted
He was airlifted to another place.
The heath, the dales,
the ridges, the high moors,
they all began to slip away
under throbbing wings.
Occasionally a woman would approach,
a silk moth in the semi-gloom
of a night flight;
he was tucked semi-consciously
into a droning life-support system.
When you are unearthed,
green roots tug,
mud and twigs come with you.
Pools and sediment
make their way as seeds and marsh
traveling as your incubated life.
Places you have slept on,
waded across,
had breezy sex over,
they tether you to a tillage and turf,
of lived experience
even as you fly far from it.
He began to plant bits of himself
into the soil of his new home.
He hid mossy stones amid plastic rocks’
left lichen trails
on the marble floors of shopping malls.
He recreated his own clay
from the sand-shifting soil he found
in an alien loam.
Slowly the land began to own him.
He dug himself into the past
of this remodeled wilderness.
Became a native of rooted and uprooted things.
When he was asked:
'to which country he belonged?'
He would show the dirt
under his fingernails.
Copyright ©
Eric Ashford
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