Current Issue: Spring/Summer 2011

revisiting  
Michael Homolka

dungless patch of grass the geese don’t wander
sand and wind ruffle the green

traipsing across the unpeopled
shore at night I feel weightless
as the fronds above

stars come out like sores in consciousness
I think I’ve fallen

too far from my father

the little canopy of trees by the highway
where we first made grass blades shriek

has all but evaporated

if I were to revisit
often enough the image of my unsteady hands
following his lead holding the sound
I could release

his absence into the air

the gray clouds my father used to say
are a good place for pain to hide
keep reminding me

he just wants to be left alone
in that indelible privacy

salt breeze passes through my sweatshirt
as if through a loose net
I want to return to

no other shore but this where the geese
continually honk
from their little stretch of lawn

as if they knew each other’s
worst secrets

and had long ago shrugged them away