Poetry

Afloat

There and back again

Photo by Kenrick Mills on Unsplash

I am quiet when I float
above greater nations than ours
to rest in the warmth of kins’ eyes
for short moments,
a sense of old self again.

My face, my body show the lapsed time since –
still, I am theirs and they are mine.

The short moment is gone

and Spanish moss hangs heavy
with our grief in the oak out front. I pack my case.
A few things fall from the quilting,
scattering on my mother’s hardwood floor.
I worry, stupidly, comparing the scattering things to us.

It stinks of hot rain in the yard as I depart
and my mother hugs me long and true.
She cries, trying not to.

Then I am quiet and float away again
to the Far East,
nourished and
devastated.