Hide and Reveal

Hide and Reveal

I.

After two long days you flinch in recognition
like being confronted
with a scene from a dream
washing at your feet amid the banal.

There are thorns here, small grasses
that will cut your toes,
some powdery remnants of glass,
a tax on smiles
and a silent way of edging off the fringes of laughter.

But here it is, beyond all that:
a delicate shiver on your spine,
a twitch of the eye,
a picture on the surface of a pond,
gone in a blink.


II.

To be left, nails scraping in dirt,
an earthworm emerging after rain
attending to small tasks,
is to make a return
from a reckless voyage
where ships circled castles in the sky.

There is no end as near as here.

And there is no return like the final one,
and no solace like the bitter knowledge
that is balm rather than briar
to the prurient soul.