Hermit
Skipping shells
Like vagrant towns
Carrying homelessness
On my back
Sleeping in it
Slipping into tidal pools
To stay out of the rain
All my epiphanies
pounded free
from the firm wet sand
below the strandline
twisting in convolutions
revolving again
back out to sea
to tangle in the murky depths
of my hypocrisy

Tender rain falling
recalling wispy remembrances
Walking slowly into it unprotected
gray like our forgotten corner dances
cloudy like lost conversations
in strange, unlikely places
Cold like the corners of your mouth
when you say something tasteless

Tumbling walls of the dead
pooling in the streets
I splash through their loss
with forgetful feet
but they gather in rivulets
babbling in whispers
and I’m numb to forget
the secret, fervent vespers

Muted veil across the earth
and sky, neither light nor dark
diverts from bringing the past
to the high watermark
these rainy days halt our time,
and I again take a trip
to chasing butterflies in the open sun
while you licked your lips

I know you, always I will,
when gray insulates
with finger to mouth
hushing the disconsolate
Whether we’re both dead
walking through our phantom lands
and I never see you again in flesh
I am marked where I stand

and knowing you is part of who I am.

I get these moments…
When the world seems cold
Shoulders and toes
And I belong
Nowhere with no one:
Old like
I’ve overstayed
The slightest welcome
And I see the back door…

And I think,
“No one would miss me
If I stepped out now.”