Hiraeth (Welsh) a kind of wistfulness for a place that never was, or a homesickness for somewhere you cannot return to, the nostalgia and the grief for the lost places of your past, places that never were.
The color beyond the color,
wistful abstractions,
the ones our bodies know.
Unpronounceable
they echo in our blood
chase us in our dreams
wake us, with the sudden flight of birds.
We used to know the language
of trees, of rocks, of rivers.
We used to read the clouds
and the skin of a snake.
Back when mud was the shape
of a man or a pie,
and night
a land we visited
on bare feet.
jks