Departure

"My friends stood in a line and waved good-bye as long as they could see my back." [Basho, The Narrow Road]

Maybe it is loss that breeds
a need for absence, a going
that suggests distance & time,
when so many days end in a slipping away.

If I can imagine a line of friends,
loved ones, the marginally close
lining up to bid farewell, do not
mistake it for a death wish,
or a longing for the inevitable rise & fall of disease,
but a silent need for an appreciation
only recognizable through sustained longing.

Maybe not longing exactly, but being missed,
having the shared space emptied,
not breaking the vessel, always fragile,
just on the brink of disrepair,
but leaving behind footprints & a bit of dust,
knowing that I'd come back,
if only for the clutter, but not soon,
not too soon.

A decade is a considerable time to live in the same somewhere:
to occupy a house, to work a room, to wander a hallway.
Though dreams arise, fall, & reemerge, a made place must change or be left behind.

There is a second image lingering somewhere behind these lines,
the portentous one that tries so hard sometimes to become fact:
a family gathering their most precious cargo, strapping down what they love &

heading down some road that promises a fulfillment that their going toward brings.