Returning is a damaged thing.
Ghost of my past are everywhere.
Thinking once that home was immortal,
but we walked on diverging pathways.
Myself as a young man wandering
from humble village life to the wide world.
the village aging in its own decay.
Shattered windows with no one left.
How vast the distance between us
on our divergent paths.

How mortal we both are the old village and I.
Now older grey and mellow my blood flowing
cooler through my veins almost ready to return
to the soil.
As one day I must.
The houses and streets tired now in decay.
weeds growing in their dilapidation.
Roofs covered in brown lichen moss.

Echoes remain of the
children’s joy in far off years.
My thoughts turn to my boyhood.
I must now turn away
and find a quiet place
to add my ashes to the clay.
As I leave the two empty swings remain
hanging from a tree branch.
creak as they oscillate with the breeze
I see a ghost of a young child laughing
I think it is me.