Going Back

Sometime after the towers received the planes
I began to weep, not only for those lost,
As you might think, but for my ex-in-laws,
Realizing suddenly they too were vanished

And had been for some time.
Only now did I feel their absence
And what they had taken with them.
Far away my life from where it was then,

As if peering front to back
Through the lenses of binoculars.
In a rental car I followed the old roads
Along a curving river, its bed now hard and dry,

And in daylight stood on the weedy lawn
Staring at the house in disrepair,
The sagging porch and no one in sight.
At night I returned, going where

I sensed I did not belong.
In darkness the house sat,
Not one light burning,
But there, in what used to be

A guest cabin, a small lamp glowed
Where, in a summer
Of my youth I had holed up
Full of vengeful fury

At their teenage daughter,
Compelling her mother
To pledge me to life
In noting the brightness of the day.

Some unreasoning fear took hold
At what I might see if I went toward
That light, and drove me from that scene
Before the time for leaving had passed.

October 2002