Step quickly step out step onto
The screened porch
It's a half-step down
His shoulders drop hopefully.

The neighbor's windchimes,
Strident and alone--
A blast of stormwashed air
Taste of summer, undecided.
Endings and beginnings abound.

Middles fade unnoticed, modest and unappealing
Like the horned cricket lurking in the corner,
Just behind the begonia, the cracked clay pot,
The gnome paintpeelingly stoic,
The fur-matted collar of a long-dead cat.

Leaves flip from green to silver and back.
The hurt will not go away.
He will not allow it.
Sewn to the back of him,
Held fast to heels, waist and head.

It shadows him down
Cellar stairs in the middle of the night.
Into the kitchen a glass of milk
Pours itself.
There used to be a pantry, he remembered,
A heavenly box outside on the patio brick.

Memory reveals nothing about
What to do with that damned cricket
So small what menace so small.

Used to be he would whirl about
Hoping to catch the shadow there.
Now he forgot and focused on other things.
A sore elbow, a tingling foot, soldiers unfaced
Soldiers unfaced.

Was it any worse for him?
I live here. He was reminded.
Yet doors opened and closed
At all hours of the day and night
Opened and closed of their own accord.

He lived here?
Thank you, he said to no one in particular.
Thank you for allowing me to stay.
Now please.
I'd like to go home.

He whirled, one last time.
Bon voyage! he yelled.
Chimes chimed, the gnome stood sentry.
And nothing and everything changed.

In a glass bottle he once
In a glass
In a glass bottle he once built a ship.
It did not venture far
Bon voyage! he shouted.

His father was not amused.
The rigging is all wrong.
He didn't know what rigging was
And didn't want to
Just another thing
That was wrong.

Bon voyage! he screamed
At the top of his lungs

His father turned, heavy,
Mud-booted, disappeared.

Something in him was still
Something that longed to move
Shipwavingly, tideswellingly
He nursed dreams of salt and sirens
Of distant shores, of elemental difficulty.

Nurse was not a masculine word.
He would not take the helm or the wheel
But instead hide below working on scrimshaw,
Trying hard to carve his history
Into some poor creature's bone.