You asked me once
why I am so taken with
the slopes and hills of this landscape.
It started with my mother.
This woman, a Irish mystic and story teller,
once told me that long ago
the hills were actually ocean waves that were paved over,
somehow freezing their power beneath asphalt and concrete.
It was a fairy tale she told her bored children
on long car rides.
But I like to imagine-
as I walk up and down the hills,
that I am actually walking on the crests of waves-
forever captured beneath me.
Now though, I think it was also a fairy tale
she told herself-
as she was landlocked and longing for the ocean.
Miserable in a marriage with a man
who would move her far from water.
A man who may have been cruel enough
to pave over oceans.
blue sky infinite 