We

Photograph by Natalie Silver

By Natalie Anderson

1

For it’s a forget-you-not world, baby

The rose bud has unfurled

for the bee.

2

Musing in maternal mimicry

I brush your tiny teeth

lightly

laughing

as you bite me

and I sing lazy lullabies till you’ll sleep

because you say you need me

You carry my sister in your endless 

untold eyes

Little one,

you carry us.

3

The first time I met the people

my warm heart had been calling for,

they were making pancakes

outside in the shade

of a golden green glimmering afternoon

They were friendly and

I was late

Later 

I pet the dog and pointed out starfish in the forest-hugged ocean

as they sang me their song.

4

In this trip’s deep eternal sleep

Friendship’s face held the mystery

of an evening

crescent moon again

Wrapping the hell of the 

false

in tastes of the truth

of gentle sweet spirit

of hardening tooth.

We meet like waterfall meets stream

You say it’s timeless

and I ask you what time is

we fall together

we fall apart

but always connected

cord through starlit sky,

the fire and the lullaby.

Natalie Anderson is an environmentalist, agro-ecologist, musician, and writer. She completed a bachelor’s degree in Environmental Studies and Agroecology at UC Santa Cruz. Her poems are produced from a place of deep love and observation within context of the human experience and our interrelated existences.