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…is, I know, where the heart is.

And my heart, for all that Iowa has done for me and for my family over this last decade, has never entirely been here, never entirely been at home.

Always, I have hankered after the Vermont I knew, always wishing I might have again what I had once known.

And, if not Vermont, then Montana, maybe Michigan, maybe Wisconsin.

This, my wayward heart…

This heart wanting more than any one life might willingly give me.

This heart, this past week, out west, and finding itself…at home

And how to explain?

Those mountains speaking to some deeper sense of myself. A certain wildness, certainly absent in Iowa. A rough edge here in Montana, a reminder of a place not yet entirely tamed. And, yeah, the heat, this heat, usually intolerable to me, but tempered, tempered just enough, by low humidity.

And something more…

That thing intangible, all but indescribable. That sense, that if I were strung now, strung here, here in Pray, strung between two trees in a hammock, I’d be at peace.


© 2011 by Dónal Kevin Gordon