The Reappeared

The Reappeared

The Reappeared

Long after we stopped remembering, word of him
drifts back from the coast
to let us know he\'s still hanging on

in someone else’s place and time,
living in a shed in their ivy-choked gardens –
his head shaved, his altered face,

the skin in patches under his eyes.
Supposedly though he’s still tender and wise;
and having found out it\'s the same there as here –

the heat breaking out of its sack,
the stars wobbling on their black thrones –
he’s made up his mind to never come back.

It’s all the same; and on its verge
the borderless ocean scrawls and scrawls
reiterations which repeat

that it’s all the same,
and he can fall into it and never change –
resurface, and simply swim away.