I’ll be back next March 2023, after
a three-year hiatus has cost me time.
It’s become a kindly drug that works
to soften my life spent on many steps.
The city’s a time machine for me,
draws me to it to take me back,
a mother’s long gone child come
home, not to stay, but to stay awhile,
breath catching a snatch of time
evaporating into mists of winter lake
wisps whipped by and past me.
But, of course, I can’t time travel,
or I might be tempted to go back
and live over the best parts, only,
of those days 40 years ago when
the whole world was still quite new,
and I would try to scoop up everything,
all possibilities brimming in my hands,
the oysters’ pearls streaming on the sand.
Drinking deep then now, I can’t, of course,
and how I wish I’d drunk much deeper,
known a headier swoosh of halcyon days
that flew so fast, coming at me, knocking
me head over heels like some huge dog,
friendly and bigger than it knows,
running at me and rising to land
his paws on my chest, me falling back
flat on my ass as if he meant for me
to stay put, stuck there under the sky.
And he just gone as fast as he came on,
the wind knocked out of me, breathless
at the wonder of that time back then I
still faintly recognize, each breath I take
to hold and turn a corner wondering if
I might run into a younger me that I
can slightly picture in my dimmed mind’s eye.
Lanning Lee 