Cascadia Healer

Wind blows keen enigma into my blood and bones—

Only to be heard and answered in the woods,

on the trail to the falls.

Coniferous limbs furred with lichen and moss reach for me.

Their oracles rush me as black shadows

fall away before

my breath catches fear,

before lungwort

like frog skin

paves my path in living green

and dying brown.

That lichen doctors everything in this place.

 

I’ll whisper a prayer into the breeze

for the cedars to lead me off trail

down to the river;

snowberries and cottonwood lace its edge.

I need to rise with the water over river rocks

solid and stoic with secret.

 

-Keri Hakan

Keri Hakan was born and raised in Missouri but currently lives,loves and writes in Oregon. She holds a B.A. in English, a minor in Philosophy and is a certified Holistic Nutritionist. She has been published in the Spring 2019 edition of Windfall A Journal of Poetry of Place and in the Four Elements June 2019 edition of Tiny Seed Literary Journal.