The DNA of Home

by KATHLEEN KIMBALL-BAKER

So quiet
this interlude—
waiting at a Highlands station
for my next train.
No whistle yet, no rumble
of old wood against iron
tracks. Only soft fists 
of wind pushing new leaves
and a few tendrils of gossip
among Scottish songbirds.
This is a wet place—all around
spring drips in thickets of trees.
Long bodies of mist slide
atop the muscular rises,
then dip into valleys, 
softening details
of white crofts whose
stone hedges slowly defer
to moss and algae. Moisture
runs like a paintbrush laden
with tartan swaths of gold, peat, and
hunter green. Boulders rise, random,
as if flung by a glacial giant
who grew bored and stomped
away. Ribbons of water sluice
down creases in hillsides, steely
with glints of sun. How easily
I could fold myself into this
rugged land, disappear, content. 
Chilled from my idyll,
I step inside the station’s
tearoom, order hot chocolate,
listen to the clerk’s lilt peak
and fall like the nearby
landscape. I drink and hear
the train whistle, feel the ground
begin a slow shudder. 
I steady myself to board,
as all my cells choose
this land, unite around
a single message:
You belong
here.