All these years later
the same is true.
The same is always true;
We rush from room to room
forgetting that a door
is still a door, and further out
is also somehow further in.

2.
It began with something said
or written down
half a life ago just now.
Shotguns in the woods at dawn.

3.
The other thing was early,
early thing a word
scooped out of time
I had to run with to get to now.
Deadly pellets hurtle through the air—
how can we escape what we remember?

4.
Pale trees of morning,
bless me with your calm.
I have been again so long,
nameless shameless peace
of the old slow road. There,
not every door is visible.
Not every room has walls. 

5.
Morning feels better
when the dream has been said.
That must be how language
really began so you could tell
another what only you had seen,
seen in dream, and done, and learned,
the wake world can make do
with pointing and shouting. 

6.
I feel better already.
A cup of coffee, French mocha,
sings like Gurnemanz,
wise, leading me through
all the distances to now.

Everyone is Parsifal, of course—
that’s the point of music:
everything is happening to you,
you in particular, no matter
how many might be listening.
Only you go through those doors.
Only you can go out all the way in.

7.
Awake now
I taste it
on my tongue,
I mean the one
that licks
at what I see
curls softly
round what I
only remember.

8.
But such remembering!
Rings of Saturn,
rungs of Romeo’s ladder,
crinkly letters
folded in a dresser drawer,
kisses, chestnuts,
the surf at Church’s Beach
cresting gently on your ankles.
Here I am again. Are you ready?

25 October 2020