Longing for the Country

I miss the country
with all her soliloquies of flowers,
and the feeling of warmth and safety
growing in the roots of every
old tree;

here I stand in the city
where sirens blare and there's always
someone all too willing to
break you out of dreams or to cause you
to shy away from epiphanies—

in the city you can't trust your
neighbors the same
as you can in the country,
and people seem colder than the very
ice growing on a winter's sidewalk;

I long for the countryside
with all her sloping hills and valleys
all her fields and flowers
of the wildlife that frolicked so lovingly
in her heartbeat.