Poppyseed

I have seen your spirit asphyxiate you in fits of rage;
watched you breathe new meaning through old lungs.
You're not done with breaking -
not content to lose yourself in this wilderness
or fall victim to ancestral traps.
Instead, you fill yourself with stories and let them split open your sides,
they spill out through your fingertips.
You roll personalities over your teeth and experiment with tastes.
There's no definition of "home" here, though you've mapped these characters
and converged their fault lines with your own arteries.
Their cold eyes pierce through mineral and wood,
raw and carved by prairie winter frost.
Inhale tobacco, exhale life:
shaman of an unknown nation in an abandoned land,
you touch life in these faces and channel their ghosts.

Take advice from the whiskeyjacks, dear, 
and keep your rabbit's foot for luck.