Time's Train

So in this tale he gets to come back

After seven dumb years six feet under.

He is invisible of course, alone

About the town, aloof yet full of wonder

At what remains and what's no longer.

Meanwhile, he's just the same, and we are he,

Traveling in the ego-split hunger

Of having it two ways at once, set free

To pity and self-pity, allowed time

To grieve for time and the long slide by which

Subtraction makes a place for us in line.

This is the perfect set up, where the switch

Occurs not in his coming back but in

Our infant longing that the world not change

When what we mean is us-. And now he's in,

Like so much damp, and finds his house arranged

The same as always, pathos here because

He fits and doesn't; so grief's a minor art

Now practiced room to room, as though a clause

Was what time was, without a start,

More fold than tear, so no one going anywhere,

Only seeming to. Rails parallel; time's train.

On the porch his wife sings, brushing her hair,

As in the yard leaves dance to the linear rain.