The Return

isn't possible, never was, never will be.

The same sun, though older by a fraction,

shines on the streets that bore my footsteps,

the same school, though older, shabbier,

larger and now shrinking again

as families have fewer children,

stands indifferent as it was then--

it was only my anguish that resonated

off the walls, lending it character.

The confectionery is long gone,

the Lebanese family that owned it

through my childhood and teen years

long sold off—what happened to

the oak floorboards and glass display cases?

The dump or some hoarder of

the trendy nostalgic perhaps.

In my mind's vision, I wander

those streets and alley-ways--

there were alley-ways, then--

gaze into the faces of people I knew,

strangers ultimately.

The Return is impossible

to a place where I never really

took root. Thus, never was.

Sometimes you have to walk away

 

The offer was good, decent pay

and a job I knew I'd like.

But for the exhaustion

and failed employment before,

I'd have stopped in at the cafe

where he told me he'd be.

I looked up at the trees

in the sunlight, my mind

shut down like my prospects,

debated not whether I'd go

and shake on the offer,

but whether I'd drive east or west

until there was no sunlight left.

 March always has the last word:

a flick of the paw, claws out

in the form of snow burying joy,

leaves us remembering the winter

amidst the hope of its death. 

I have never been 

accounted wise,

rarely handsome,

seldom good--

all those virtues

given at an

unremembered time--

though when you

chose to answer

to what you saw

in me then and now,

I choose to answer to

"blessed."

Honouring

 The letter arrived yesterday,

only an address to and from,

the writer acknowledging

we did not know each other,

so to him I was "Neighbour,"

and he an adherent 

of a certain faith.

 

Did I know, he asked,

who controls the world?

With a tract and a Biblical reference,

we clearly disagreed,

though he does not yet know that.

 

It would be too easy to 

dismiss him in a dozen different ways,

shred his Biblical understandings,

but the painstakingly hand-printed letter,

with an error or two crossed out,

his manifest sincerity and desire

that one more soul not be lost to Evil,

invites--compassion? maybe that's

patronizing--at least the quiet

setting aside of letter and intent 

and maybe a prayer of thanks

for his caring.

Maybe one of his other letters

has provoked a reply.

Maybe only the silence

of unsent mail.

Bear Country

Opening the car door,

I felt eyes on me.

Black bear, perhaps

sniffing the takeout.

We gazed at each other

for maybe count of ten.

Shrug.

I walked to the doorway.

She bolted into the bush,

two little cubs following. 

 

I wonder how hungry

they were.