From, But Not Of

Read more poetry by Britt Wolfe

I carry the loam of those places beneath my nails—
red clay and river silt, the stubborn dust of back roads
that still whisper my name in the old dialect of rain.
I know the taste of their winters—sharp as pine resin,
the hearth-smoke clinging to wool,
laughter cracking open like black walnuts
around a table worn smooth by generations.

Those roots run deep through my marrow,
knotted and resilient as grapevines,
feeding me long after I thought I had outgrown them.

Yet I am not of them.

I am the green shoot that broke the crust,
the leaf that turned its face to a different sun,
drinking light from latitudes the old stories never named.
I honour the dark earth that held me,
but I will not let it shape the reach of me.

My sap leans toward wider skies—
toward new words, unpractised on my tongue,
toward silences that no longer press in
but open.

There is no betrayal in becoming.

Only the slow, sacred work of a tree
that thanks the ground for its first breath
while stretching into wind and starlight,
its branches writing what came next
against an open sky.

I am from the valley, yes—
its sorrows and its sturdy songs stitched into my bones.

But I am not of the valley any longer.

I am the river that once ran through it
and now carries its memory seaward—
glinting, changed,
entirely, beautifully,
my own.

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Poetry by Britt Wolfe: