It’s been raining a lot since I’ve come home,
fruiting mushrooms saluting the El Nino season.

Air marinated in dew greets my lungs
with a warmth opposing its expected dampness.

Wild that just a month ago, I was in a dry valley 
where I was led by hand by a tatik to show me

it was amaranth she had plucked and steamed
with lemon and sumac
that made me say brokenly:

Inch eh sa?

as I grabbed seconds, topping the leaves with a 
goaty dollop of matzoon on sun-warmed lavash.

Where after our meal we all gathered around a bush
to watch its flowers explode open to the sunset

where we toasted to our health,
To our families
To their God
To our mountains

To our land
To Artsakh 
To Artsakh
To us.

Each cheers emptying the recycled water bottles
of homemade apricot liqueur.

Now, a month later I chew the lemony taste of
woodland sorrel I gathered from a forest’s edge 

ruminating on a different acidity –
the absence of fresh wild thyme tea

the wilderness that is both here and far from home.