Return

I drove to the sea on my first day back.
It had been more than a year
Since the growling ocean
Sang at my feet.
The insipid cold wind–black–
Was made warm by my wife’s soft hand
It hummed along with the singing motion
From the frothing waves that sang defeat.

My feelings festering like open-market fruit;
The grainy greyish sand cold and bland
Flirted with my toes in condescending notion
An informant to my slanderous conceit.

The family stood aback.
They joyously clattered about the joys of our “planned”
Return. My wife and I, we stared past the commotion
At our landlocked past down that potholed street.

I stood bleeding, a hemophiliac
Staring at my past; my future lay unplanned.
We knew not what lay before us, only ocean.
We knew not how les miserables were replete.
We cried there, by the grey sea, without cheer
For there we buried all aspiration to a missionary’s career.