“What is it to be Wild?” by Sally Quon
Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “What is it to be Wild?” by Sally Quon.
What is it to be Wild?
By Sally Quon
What is it to be wild?
To watch the gulls on the shore
and believe that you, too, could fly,
if only you could run fast enough?
To cut through the air
as a frog cuts through water-
using your arms to spread the air before you,
your legs to kick yourself
higher,
and higher?
What is it to be powerful?
Uninhibited enough to open
your powerful wolf-mouth
and howl
your grief, your pain?
Hear it echo off canyon walls,
come back, to comfort you?
You are wild and powerful-
a horse on the Eastern slopes,
wind in your mane,
the skin of the earth capturing
the thunder of your hoofbeat,
thrumming, thrumming,
back to the center,
to where all wild things
are born.
Copyright © Sally Quon
Sally Quon is a disabled writer living in the Okanagan Valley of beautiful British Columbia, home of the Syilx people. She has been widely published in poetry and creative nonfiction anthologies, such as Chicken Soup for the Soul – The Forgiveness Fix, BIG: Thoughts on a Plus Size Life, and on-line at The Good Life Review. Her photographs have appeared in Canadian Geographic and Nature Alberta’s Important Bird Areas. Her poems have been included in collections such as Worth More Standing, Voicing Suicide, and Coming Out of Isolation. Beauty, Born of Pain is her first full length collection.
Sally is a member of the Federation of BC Writers, Haiku Canada, and an associate member of The League of Canadian Poets.
In her spare time, Sally enjoys exploring the back roads near her home. Sally also co-edits a twice-monthly haiku newsletter called “The Solitary Daisy.”
When not engaged in other creative pursuits, Sally enjoys cooking, teaching workshops, and curling up with a blanket and a cat.
Her bucket list is entirely about bears.
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