Sifting & Packing

Books with notes from forgotten classes, pages & pages of letters from much loved boy kept between pages & pages of long loved books,
Photos of redhead & i, photos of boy & i. photos of friends who moved on,
Coasters I took from weird bars we had 21st, 25ths, 30ths & 'screw boys' & 'screw girls' fests,
books I bought from little known bookstores, and so much more.
I know I am truly leaving,
for now, a mist of nostalgia is slowly clouding my six years here.


Left on the shore
by poet I don't remember

One small hat - the shore birds prayed in,
two beached stars that pointed the way of the wind,
three egg shells that held three sullen planets.

I came upon all this in the first of middle ages and passed right by
so wise had I grown in the forty years that turned my head gray and my feet flat,
so full was I of schemes for making water out of ordinary seas and something of myself.

The wind blew down my shirt and up my pants,
the seas raged and boiled, it was late in the year, too late to be out for fun.
And there I was, going nowhere and seeing nothing while the birds bowed their heads
all at one time
and two hands told the wind where and how hard and the earth and its pale sisters looked upon everything for the first and the last time.