THE HOMECOMING
Mist-laden eyes peer through misty leaden skies
For the return of your overdue friend.
Old man, you stand in the deepening gloom
Scanning, with your coal-scarred piercing eyes
Waiting in your dull-brick outside room.
Your age-veiled eyes cry tears
But inside-out.
Hard world, hard work, hard rock
Have not petrified your softness
But layered it.
Hard steel, hard will, hard line.
The monochrome stillness is shattered to shards
By a soft fluttering flash of white underwings
A smoke-black snow-speckled featherweight of warmth
Dives down and perches before you.
Iron-grip cerise toes hold tight at the loft
and amber button eyes plead for rest.
Your emissary begins a throaty gentle speech in praise of home
and places you will never see.
Your inside-out tears trickle from your pain-scarred lenses
and your long flight through uncried-for human grief is ended.