Down a dirt road,
past decrepit barns frozen
in a state of collapse,
where rusted cars lie upside-down
with blackberry vines climbing,
holding tight to the browning metal,
past thick wiry Doug-fir plantations
and fields of purple fireweed flowering
off blackened stumps,
I follow this road to its end,
park on the peak of an unnamed ridge
at a fire pit littered with empty beer cans
and shotgun shells scattered,
planted in a seedless soil.
 

I follow the spiraling song 
of a Swainson's thrush
through brambles and firs,
leave behind everything
I thought I needed.
I reach a spring bubbling out of the earth,
trace the creek from its source
down the steep slope into a lush valley
where the creek feeds into the river,
follow the river to the ocean, find a place
to start again.