Pendulum

After a midsummer storm I awake
gin-fogged, barely seeing.

I hear an orchestra of banging doors
my father’s footsteps light against the wooden floor.

Here, lucid, there is relief in forgetting
having crossed an ocean,

hands differently placed on a clock,
my exact place on earth.

Realization moves at a glacial slowness
and then, whiplash--

a strike, like a javelin through the heart
that eases into a dull, numbing pain.

Reality, the distance, bitter resolutions
that led me here.

On the end of that trajectory, a body aches
from springs on a worn-out mattress.

In youth, there is grappling with the wanting and not wanting
the run, the noise, the liberation,

while also burdened by the heavy
inexorable load of wanting to stay.