Home » Poems » David Smalling » Out of Exile

Out of Exile

I am not a blank slate to score upon again
Yet there is this gap, this hollow place
That wants a name. I search for it in vain
The alien presence of eyes, and of face
Nothing comes back to memory. We are
Strangers now, and the empty space
Yawns akwardly. Thirty years is too far
For memory to recognize what is it I trace

For family and friends like fluids converged
In a nether space that makes glee brief
I feel the joy familiar as sky and sea merged
But the change in people contests my relief
For man have changed many things, but few
As much as himself - and as if to hide before
Familiar eyes. I remain old in a world new
And hesitance now where once I was very sure. 

Time drizzled, drizzled, drizzled and terminus
Came piling up the sands of days for the wind.
Exile was my fickle way of escaping detritus
The sand shy had not yet blown but I was blind
And in the darkness where spins now alone 
The white leached of soul calcified by snow wet
As unshed tears, under its stigma do so moan
More than the coming home again, the soft death
 
Of bonds, and the sense of proprietary loss. Who
Is left to stare in my face blank and expressionless?
And say by angle of shoulder: nothing here for you
I see all my labor like butter in the sun, and I am less
Than all the worth of man because the price of me
Is trickled in the sand. They kept the rules the same
But changed the game, and for lost of this efficacy
I am poured out from the chamber, a pot in shame.

For this I fled the foolish notion fawning in my head?
For this I left the better known of friends? The mills
Of stress do spin there still, the uncertainty of bread
And age from time's trembling vessel nervous spills
The unfriendliness to share because of a narrow dread
That tomorrow stalk alone will not suffice the failing
New. I was tired of my self-imposed exile, the shred
Remains I gathered and came home to true trembling.

There is only one familiar landmark, a true friend, this
Alone give my days orientation to praise. My true pole
Is where such a friendship in the sand storm still exist
The lighthouse in the billowy mist, anchor for the soul.
But I have no root here to hold me firm to one spot
Roots adventitious grows away, and then cold excision
The stem alone left in the miry mud to to swell and rot
Coming out of exile finds coping a harder final decision

Post Comments

Poetrysoup is an environment of encouragement and growth so only provide specific positive comments that indicate what you appreciate about the poem. Negative comments will result your account being banned.