HOMECOMING

    by Bates Corlieu

Little white car shuffles me through my deck of mountains
fanned out brown against the late day longings
memories bouncing barefoot on the backseat
squatting in the long ago gravel driveway
gathering pebbles that showed me these craggy canyons

and then that raw and chronic panic
of pushing up from the bottom of the water
sailing upward with a perishing ache to surface
for that breaking shock of air

Funny where the mind goes like the wind blows down a washboard road
I go to not just another husband
but he whom I recognized at once rising from the deep of time
to tear open sealed letters and enter locked rooms
and pull over to dance in the sundown