Sunrises shift by seconds.
My second sojourn here has wound
down the same streets, the same
susurrus sounding like a shell from hand to ear.
This vista doesn’t match my memory,
and whether the fault has anchored itself –
like a fragrant, sorrowing vine that clutches
at its trellis — to my eye, to my mind, to the passage
of time since the year before, or to some
unknown difference in what’s ahead,
I cannot sense.
But either, in their impervious weave
of reed and seedy stem
can carry me from here
to the next ship, the next ascent,
the next return to what I’ve seen before.
