Coming Home to Yourself

REUNION

This is how it is:
one part of you journeys forth
while the other stays at home to wait and keep things going.
And the years pass
with you (the waiter) going about your business
while you wonder how he is and what’s happening to him.
Nights, you dream strange dreams in which you see him
wandering through magic cities with turrets of ivory and gold
or wading a swamp-like sea through twisted trees
with voices clutching at him out of the darkness.
You feel his fear and his loneliness and his yearning
while you walk your days down, doing what’s necessary,
stacking your sorrows like cordwood in the corner back of the stove
watching years bloom and fade, bloom and fade
till memory fails and you begin to wonder
if there was ever another you at all.

Then, one day, the years heavy on you and your heart a mass of bruises,
the air starts to shimmer and a small voice whispers, “Guess who?”

You walk to the door and the whole sky is a rainbow
And you stand holding your heart with your hands to keep it
from exploding.

And somewhere deep inside you
the wanderer opens his travelworn satchel and upends it
and a thousand gems cascade into the light.

– Albert Huffstickler
From The Wander Years, SRLR Press, 1998.