Like Wild Things Do
The Wanderer
I was born near castles crowned in snow,
where spires pierced skies the sun forgot.
A land of stone and lullabies,
steeped in silence, trimmed in frost.
I left it young, the cold behind,
a memory more borrowed than mine.
Then west we went, where heat hung thick,
and neon pulsed like a heartbeat slick.
A desert dressed in feathers and flame,
where beauty blinked and burned the same.
It shimmered bold, it sang with pride,
but I could never quite reside.
We wandered next where shorelines gleamed,
where salt-stung air still smelled like dreams.
The sand was soft beneath our tread,
the sea like glass beneath the red.
But paradise, though rich and wide,
can drown a soul not built for tide.
There came a call to wooded things,
to fields that buzzed and mud that clings,
to winding roads and rust-stained streams,
to porch-lit nights and gravel dreams.
The world, it pressed, sharp, unrelenting,
and still I moved, half-reinventing.
One final time, I met the sea
and gave it every past of me.
Each version lost, I let them go,
watched who I was drift soft and slow.
The tide pulled back. The page was bare.
I turned, and Tennessee was there.
Not planned, not begged, not circled red,
but somehow, where my spirit led.
It didn’t shine or shout my name,
just opened arms without acclaim.
The holler held me, rough and true,
and let me rest like wild things do.
I live in a holler that hums like a hymn,
where the light filters soft and the edges grow dim.
Tucked deep where the mountains bow their heads,
and cradle the quiet like well-worn beds.
My cabin, half timber, half tale,
breathes like a secret the woods never tell.
Its bones are made of rain-soaked beams,
stitched with spiders, stitched with dreams.
Peace settles here in the simplest things,
in kettle steam and porchboard springs,
in screen doors yawning open wide,
and wind that waltzes the laundry line.
No gold, no crown, no gilded gate,
just moss that climbs and stars that wait.
I didn’t chase this patch of sky,
it called me soft, it called me shy.
Like rivers folding into stone,
like roots that know when they’ve come home.
And now I’m held, not trapped, but free,
in every dusk-lit cedar tree,
in every breeze that seems to say,
You’ve wandered far enough. Stay.
This piece reimagined as a song using Suno (lyrics are mine).
Lyrics:
Verse 1
I grew up living out of boxes
Never really learned to settle down
Right when something started feeling normal
We were headed to another town
I don’t know if it made me easy
Learning how to slip in and out
Or if all it ever really taught me
Was to keep my distance now
Pre-Chorus
Another box
Another truck
I’ll be gone soon enough
Chorus
I ran like wild things do
Through every town I ever knew
Just a tail light on the highway
Chasing every changing view
The mountains called to me clearly
And the valleys spoke the honest truth
Some souls were never meant to light a city
They belong where wild things do
Verse 2
Every place had its own rhythm
Front porch talks and Friday nights
Kids who grew up knowing everybody
Running under the same streetlights
I could laugh and play along
But they all looked so certain
Like they knew I didn’t quite belong
Like I was some pretty, peculiar burden
Pre-Chorus
Another box
Another truck
I’ll be gone soon enough
Chorus
I ran like wild things do
Through every town I ever knew
Just a tail light on the highway
Chasing every changing view
The mountains called to me clearly
And the valleys spoke the honest truth
Some souls were never meant to light a city
They belong where wild things do
Verse 3
Then a road bent toward the peaks
Where the air ran wide and blue
No bright noise, no crowded skyline
Just a holler making room
And something in that stillness
Felt like something I once knew
Like maybe I had found the place
Where the wild things bloom
Final Chorus
I ran like wild things do
Through every town I ever knew
Just a tail light on the highway
Chasing every changing view
The mountains called me home at last
And the valleys held the truth
Some souls were never meant to light a city
They belong where wild things do
Author’s Note:
A big part of my life existed in boxes. I have moved more than thirty times in my life, and I’m only thirty seven years old. For most of my life, home was never really a place. It was whatever town we were passing through next, whatever house we stayed in long enough to unpack a few things before packing them again.
Last year, that finally changed.
After all those years of moving, I bought my forever home. It’s a small cabin tucked away in a holler in the mountains I love. For the first time in my life, I have a place that is truly mine. Something about that tiny cabin in the woods made me feel a kind of peace I had never felt before, like I had finally found where I belong.
That feeling is what inspired this piece.
I wrote the poem after moving in, trying to capture what it felt like to finally stop wandering and realize that the road had led me somewhere that felt like home.
Recently I adapted the poem into song lyrics. A year has passed, and I am still here in the same place. In years to come, I expect I will still be here. Even now, while I’m going through some of the hardest moments of my life, one thing that brings me comfort is knowing I finally have a place to hide.
*Don’t worry, everything’s still free.
I’ve just decided to treat my writing a little more like busking.
There’s a tip jar out now,
you can donate if something I’ve written ever stuck with you,
but there’s zero pressure.
Honestly, even better than donations?
Restacks. Shares. Comments.
That’s the currency that keeps the cage alive.
From the cage,
Canary Vale 🪶
Poemsbycanary@gmail.com