Alternate Self-Portrait
One day
I will drift
into darkness
and know it
perhaps
the way a son
recognizes a mother
after he has returned
from many years
of travel
understanding
the new distance
is neither
beginning nor
end
only stillness
Copyright © 2015 by Dean Rader. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on December 30, 2015, by the Academy of American Poets.