becomes home, no matter how long we lived there,
long enough for some to set down slender tendrils of roots

or far longer so as to embed ourselves in the earth,
whether welcoming loam for growing things or hardpan

or desert or dirt below a city that never sleeps. Our soles
left impressions in that ground, whether we loved it or not,

that implanted itself in us, who claimed it as home—
these foothills goldening under broad-topped oaks

spreading their arms wide, a refuge for birds we seldom
hear in our grownup city lives. Why must we have to leave

before we realize how much that landscape shaped us?
When might we see how much we shaped it, too?