echo aching 

my voice doesn't come back to me.
not even when i find a valley or a gorge.
instead, i am met with a car horn
or sometimes a window-eyed elevator.
i don't know why i so badly want
my voice to return. after all, to be a creature
is to be an artist & to be an artist means
to let go. to feel all the butter leave you
& glisten in the mouths of strangers.
still, i have a dream where i speak a poem
into a woven basket & the poem
crawls hope. sings itself to me. no longer
becomes my poem but the world's.
finally a lullaby. a place to rest inside of.
i am not so big-headed that i think 
my echoes are best. i would take
the return voice of a crow or a dog 
or a lover. i find our world is full of 
less & less returns. migrations turned
into escapes. still i am reminded that
after decades the salmon still knew
how to come back when the damn 
was broken. the water still wanted 
to lick our faces. maybe the echoes i make
are on a longer journey. will return one day
when i am part of the soil & the trees
i feed develop a faint affinity for spoons
& early mornings. then, the poem will
come back. tangle itself in the hair 
of a neighbor who might pick
her free teeth with the words.