This poem is also available in audio version (press play below or download as an MP3 here)

 

The Last Word

 

There could be this other way, she said, of living from the inside out.

Really doing it, she meant.

Letting go of, “I am she, of this name.
Of this home, and marriage, and weight.
Of this conduct. Of these beliefs, and not those.”

Instead, she said, it could be like this:
I weave at the river. I speak with fish.
When I stand at the water, the sun is in my chest.
The woods walk me home.

Most of the things I know have no words,
but I need none, for I am them.

On my last day, memory will be a blazing orange sunset,
and I’ll rest in the sling of the horizon.

The last word on my lips will be member:
I was a member of this, a limb of it.

I was that blessed —- to be a limb of it.

– Tara Mohr

 

photo credit: Tj Holowaychuk