Not all who wait at the threshold mean to enter. Some wait for you to step out.
Fog thickens...congeals -
the way dread settles when it chooses a host.
Only then do I notice the lake breathing again,
its exhalation brushing my skin
like a hand returning from earth
with something to confess.
The pumpkins grin,
two wounds shaped into smiles
by a child who didn’t know
how old a darkness can be.
Their glow is not fire;
it is memory learning to smolder.
The dock reaches out,
a polished beam of accusation.
Each step mutters its own guilt,
as if the wood has learned
to speak in the language of the damned.
And the boat...the boat
answers without moving.
Its lanterns fever-bright,
they frame two silhouettes
thin as regret on a pane of glass.
One wears my mother’s shawl;
the other bears my father’s hush.
Their borrowed faces survey me -
not with longing
but with recognition.
A clarity chills me,
the kind that does not ask
but takes.
They are not waiting for me.
They are waiting with me.
I have been crossing for years.
Seneca Lake once held my boyish limbs,
my tidy fears - shapes I could name.
But the water that wrapped around us
warm, then abruptly winter,
did not change temperature.
I did.
Something followed me from that lake;
quiet, patient, and confident
I would one day turn around.
Lincoln Street, the ruddy house,
the wallpaper steeped in damp sighs,
I thought the creaking was the structure aging.
Now I know a house remembers
everyone who ever tried to leave it.
Even here, on Boulevard and Street,
under a counterfeit sun
that hums as though it knows my hours,
the shadows twist in ways
that suggest former lives.
Sometimes footsteps pause at my window,
as though practicing ownership.
Their patience teaches mine.
I no longer use the word death.
It responds too readily...
from the drain, the stairs,
the hushed space between ticks of a clock.
It understands waiting
better than I do.
And now the ferryman stands
where the dock ends,
where memory softens like wet timber
and time glistens slick as oil.
He does not ask for coins.
He has collected his toll for years:
my parents’ touch,
my childhood voice,
the names I refuse to speak for fear
they will answer.
When he calls,
I will step forward -
not out of dread
but clarity:
I have been departing
longer than I have stayed.
So if you pass the corner
where the streetlamp falters,
leave no token -
not a wave,
not a flower,
not the burden of your name.
Light travels strangely here,
and anything you offer
may not return to you
as itself.
GBS jr
1999
0 Comments