One bridge and then another over the fisherman’s net  
of steel water and high, secreting grasses. 

Here the bare cypress trees throw themselves from the banks 
like wailing women, their hands scraping at the sky’s silent faces  
in the grey rags of Spanish moss. 

This home is always shifting, the water reaching up to take 
what it will. There are days I cannot find myself  

between the steps of my parents’ home and the long sigh  
of afternoon rain. Each time I leave 

it is the last time. Time passes faster when I am not there 
so now she does not know my face 

and the house has sunk further into unkempt green.  
How far can we carry memory before it is something else? 

How long can a man at sea call himself her husband 
and not someone who is lost? 

Between here and what’s not, I come, as all strangers,  
to the door to wait for the stranger who answers.