Yellow Ocean

I was born with the ocean

tossing spit balls over the rocky California beaches

into my windows.

I was just a baby

when Mom and Daddy loaded everything in the car and we drove

over mountains and through wheat fields

and past the sunflowers dancing along Kansas highways.

I was crying

when the air got heavy and the wind drooped with salt and

Mom and Daddy parked the car in Florida.

I was a stranger there.

Palm trees and swamps and millions of people crowded me in for eighteen years.

But I was a stranger there.

I was all grown up

when Mom and Daddy loaded me onto an airplane

and I flew over mountains and past the Kansas sunflowers.

I was laughing

when the air turned fresh

and the wind teased the mountains

and the hills that rocked like a thousand marching camel humps.

Yellow wheat rolled and swayed like ocean waves:

I was in a new sea.

But

I was home.