Echoes across the stretched-out land

The prompt for Poets and storytellers United is letting go

Echoes across the stretched-out land

I am Dutch,
my soul raised from the lower lands,
standing tall against the northern wind,
a guardian of Germanic threads
woven through ancient bone.

I do not come in darkness.
I rise in the pink, the red, the yellow of tulips,
a crown of colour bursting
through heavy clay.

My heart and mind were born
under an endless sky
where words are not dressed up
but reveal the naked truth.

An echo of bike bells
drifts through rainy air.
Castles and mills return
across the stretched-out land.

I let go of my roots,
left them for distant grounds
with majestic mountains
and unreal blue lakes.

When I return to my homeland,
street stones still carry
half-faded stories
of my voice
that refused to vanish.