Pilgrim

Sometimes the days are hard

bright things I must endure

to reach the heaven of

the nights

I stand before my window

lift the straps from off the skin

I keep hidden from the sun

for hours

I can lie still and quiet

not lie and say fine not

fear not death not still

stage four

Hours I can watch

moonlight on the water

hear teen voices on the road

feel the straps I let fall

as I step into the sea.

Dépaysement

I say the wrong word again

and my children correct me.

Do they worry, I wonder?

Do they wonder where I’ve gone?

I remember my grandfather

not long before he died

going for his walk

as always.

I went with him that day

April in New England

forsythia firing blooms

over walls of secret gardens.

He was a native son

of native sons of this city

all the way back

to when there were no

walls, no bricked off gardens.

Which is to say

he was no native,

no more than I.

Is that why, I wonder,

he lost his way?

He pointed at a grand house

no grander than his own.

I almost bought that,

he said, after the war.

But later my mother

told me he didn’t.