The Return

What returns is never the same
smelling of afternoon sun
clothed in dust motes
that clutter the room
sheet music on the piano yellows
to leave is to forsake
the innuendo and rumor
of the social self squeezed
into bourgeois aspirations
of material comfort and success
endless power over the Other
they must be burned to begin again
Out of the cluster of oaks
I clamber across the grasslands
they sway as diverse in their strength
as the berries that weigh down the ivy
brushing against the face of my home
I do not judge them they ignore me
their perfect spheres taunting my need
for order beauty the seasons turning
and so I am back hunting them
gathering them washing them in cold water
tasting their outer layer of flesh then the hint
of sweetness waiting in their darkened core
All discoveries are new mysterious
seedily mundane they compose
the enigma of arrival the enigma
of being-there to wrestle eternity and time
to outrun death lodged in our chests
like a riddled heart pumping poison
that spills out of capillaries and veins
soaks into our socks bathes our knees
splashes into the bowels of life which circle
monotonously on the weaver’s spindle
fabric embryonic in its strands
is about to appear textured colored marked
in dyes the ancestors raised from the earth
I would not remain but the owl cries stir in me
the lust to fly after prey to swoop down
on the unsuspecting jewel hidden
in clumps of earth overturned
by the plow I will write a new self
on the wing wedded to the hills rich
in simple things finding my way
through the milky shadows
of deepest night
the muffled calls
of the return