After Five Years

Beside the lumber recently 
cut, five men struggling 
up a muddy, snow-ridged road; 
and, five-stories-tall, 
in your peaked-roof apartment 
where warmth was common, 

             I, 
after five years wondrous 
about returning, fearful 
a little, more than 
a little hopeful 
before the illimitable host 
of possibilities, 

         I, anxious 
for revival, standing 
at your porthole window 
watching a latenoon sky sullen 
above your sea, 

         the ships 
puffing along, peddlars, 
so that I cannot, do not care 
to pursue romantic thoughts 
of their cargoes, voyages, 
or possible great grief, 

I, a ravelled thread 
at the needle's eye, try hard, 
with disappointment, to think 
of you spun back, gathered 
into your imagery: 

         this sky 
not yet beginning to ripen 
your excellent moon, 
these abstract boats 
adrift upon the mindless sea; 

for nothing happens, no north 
of thunder enhances my hearing, 
no lightning hallows my thought
or brightens my conscience, 

not even this fruit, here 
in this bowl as it used to be 
promising incredible secrets, 
stirs its full lips 
to the words of love 
and acknowledgement 
we somehow always expected; 

not the books where you left 
them, dusty, close-mouthed 
as the breath we mixed, sometimes 
beat into a blow 

          that suggested 
the person bending near of splendor; 
nor am I swept back 
to first seas breaking, or 
furious, exultant pain;

            only five 
nameless, unshaped men drag along 
a turning muddy road, five 
men for a moment flickering,
then slipping—

        hardly anguish—
through a narrow break 
in the grey fence just below; 
and they are gone. 

          The new 
wood, raw, awkward, an eye- 
sore, waits, new wood, 
while your radio plays 
music careless as time, 
even as first flakes 
of snow begin 

        to prick the sky- 
light we used to praise, 
especially in moonlit 
moments—a cathedral window, 
so we said—for our eyes raised. 

And I know that this, 
this ease, this acceptance 
as though nothing had happened, 
is what it should be