There are things you have to learn, moving here from anywhere else. Like how to pronounce geoduck, Puyallup, and Sequim. Drew Myron, has a little longer list:
Fern, talus, tide
It’s salal, he says, but I don’t know how
to say what he touches, how to make the
words that form new memory
It’s alder, birch, spruce,
a shore pine edge in offshore wind
We drive through days of dictionary
pages, catalog a new land of heather
and fern, talus and basalt
Surrounded by twisting syllables
and vines of vowels, we reach new ground
Our tongues trip over fresh formations:
alsea, siltcoos, siuslaw
On hands and knees,
we sort through language
slow and halting, finally give up
to touch earth instead
Wordless, we hunt for smooth rock,
broken shell, soundless objects
that will speak for us
It’s ocean now, not asphalt and engines,
that rushes and recedes
Current and tide,
sunbreaks and river roads
a new vocabulary that says home
— Drew Myron