Homecoming

Over the bridge I thought I burned;

Has this trip home been decades late?

Yet I remember every turn,

And every smell, and every taste.

Memories scattered by the road

As wild poppies on the highway,

Past each new bend an old bloom grows;

And not one has died away.

Following the flow of paint and tar;

Headway through the pain and loss.

Sorrow never stretched so far,

Nor was a greater ocean crossed.

I pursue my childish apparition

And the smell of salt in the air-

Have I forgotten my root system?

I am from somewhere.

I reach the end of land,

The end of me, the end of running

Chanting waves on cluttered sand

Sing the forgotten into forthcoming.

All these years of mourning

A land that never died.

A sudden break in storming;

Nothing is lost. We are alive.

Staring into the waves and wind,

Until the sea stares into me.

I remember who I’ve been,

And who I may still be.