Some days on back I sat on a pub’s oak stool
and drew in the musty smell of its past,
its scent of old leather and spilled beer that pooled
under the floorboards in a sticky mass.

An old man came in and pulled up a chair
and he scratched at his stubbly beard.
His grey eyes had fixed me in a granite stare
and rumbled ‘til his raspy throat cleared.

He said, “The word ‘nostalgia’ comes from Greek stems.
It means the pain of homecoming.
We look to the past through a cataract lens
at a ‘home’ that’s made out of nothing.”

I asked, “You can’t go back to your home again?”
He shook his head, a woolen wisp of a sigh.
“That home exists in the land of pretend,”
he softly exhaled in laconic reply.

And then he stood and slipped away home
while the strains of “Jerusalem” played.
I sat in my cloud of memories alone,
from fog emerged in the present to stay.

As you came into my view, I could see…  
There was something missing internally.    
A void was preventing me to be free,            
And was plaguing me, since eternity.            

But with your presence, I suddenly knew,
All along, my insides have felt askew.        
It’s keeping me down; it’s painting me blue.    
But now the color is displaced by you…        

Displaced by you–my gaps vanish in whole,  
Displaced by you–integrated my soul,      
Deep–into every last wrinkle and fold,      
We’re integrated–together we’re rolled.    

And as you’ve become ingrained in my veins,    
There’s no pause to the pattern or plane,      
We sit flush, joining as if we’re the same,    
This feels familiar--there might be a name.        

But how to define something of the sorts,
Existing naturally, without a source,
But now apparent, an obvious force
As it all made sense–I uttered...

“of course.”

Rubble and dust
spinning in swirling disks
around the fire
until one place
of greater attraction
draws debris to itself
and coalesces into an incandescent planet.
Earth and sky begin
full of promise.

cobalt blue, lime green and
lemon yellow warp
stretches on a loom

the shuttle dances
back and forth
weaving my crimson weft
into the pattern of the universe

my pilgrimage zigzags
beneath the comb
as time winds the warp
which begins and ends
beyond my scarlet thread