I am drawn to them
in books, in memory
one much visited,
small, habitable, easily traversed,
remembered, rediscovered,
the mingled smells
of sea and soil.

They may rise up
from the seabed of sleep,
from restless origins,
defiant cliffs transmute
to gentling foothills,
village yards.

Fixed in time
or changing hourly,
weather always the one
most wished-for,
the season chosen for its gifts,
its special gifts: the silenced wood,
the yielding soil, new grass,
wild apples, signalling
their readiness.

They are encompassed
and mutable, known
and revelatory,
exist nowhere, and endure
as air endures, as salt.

-Marjorie Mir