I don't think I've ever been a stranger.

The trouble with me is that I've been nowhere.
I guess I've only been no where
if you're only counting places 
my sandal-feet have touched stones--

I don't care what my mother says
about sandals being bad for hiking 
sandals and bare feet were the only things
meant for walking if you want to know 
how the stones feel about you.
Shoes are for strangers.

I've chopped off a pony tail--
Stumbled with the short ragged and wild-grass hair
of a flapper-- balanced
up and down the older
bent leg of the states.

If you count the ocean and the rain water
I guess you could say 
I've been everywhere too.
I've floated on my back past
Tasmania to stop in Sydney where 
I looked for koalas and worried about rock fish
killing me from the poison before 
I reach the store.

You see I've yet to master the role of a stranger--
Would you believe if I told you
that my mother walked me in a parka 
at the foot of the Himalayas 
and told me that God mad a path
to walk if we dared to face him?

Did you know I write car-advertisements
on the forty-second floor of a tall
building in Manhattan that makes trees look
like toe-bones? I stop at the same
cafe that serves Australian coffee
in blue card board cups.
I sit in the window and watch the same 
people I've never seen.

They name me
-- call me
Pixie, call me Muse, call me
Darling-- call me BLUE hair-- BLUE
hair-- the blue hair girl 
who is somehow eating a garden
salad in a diner in Boston
while counting the spots on a 
poison dart frog on a raft in
Brazil where she was also
born a rain forest child
in leaves and water-wet brown hair--

My name, my name is BLUE girl
and you've known me since I was
three-- I always order the same thing

I count the box turtles under your porch--
I eat banana splits if I haven't learned
where my hips are yet--
I walk with broken headphone in on the same 
telephone lines as the crows--
You know me-- you know me
by the only parts of me that
stay the same which are my blue
hair and my smile that tells
you that I have always known
you and I have always
thought that your hands alone
hold the sky from the earth
when it's heavy at night
like stones-- 

My smile is sideways because
I lost my retainer 
when I was ten-- so my teeth
look like paint-peeling fence posts
in Georgia.

You were my dentist who told
me I needed my wisdom teeth 
removed-- 

I buy apples at the gas station.
I always put two yellow packets in my coffee--
You know my routine from watching
me recite it once.
BLUE GIRL
and you're comfortable by
my sandals
and my fence-post mouth. 

No, I guess I don't want to be a stranger 

I like water more than stones.