Backtrails

Backtrails

(“And everyone who has given up houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or property, for my sake, will receive a hundred times as much in return and will inherit eternal life.” Matthew 19:29)

It wasn’t a refund I wanted; I had cash enough already.
I could exchange size for color, color for capacity, capacity for brand name
and still be equal to where I started.

I want to posses what no one has sold,
to dwell when no one has lived;I want to dream what never was created,

to hear poetry just like

The first words I thought I heard like sunlight on
Mount Diablo’s golden foothills.

I awake and want to return home. I pass asleep and know
that when the phone rings tomorrow the voice will sound
nothing like
the friends who hiked the backtrails and shared dried apricots
and canteen water.

The home I own is old; the home where we played password
from midnight until 2 slipped from my hands 25 years past.
The floor was our game table and donuts the morning’s food.

I feel like returning; yet places pass through new owners and time,
the siding is replaced, the trees uprooted and, now that I remember

I longed for another place when I occupied the place I long for today.

Who will cash me out now, I am tired of bargain-hunting. Fulfill
my hollow hungers a hundred times over. I want to walk the
dusty paths of undistilled exposure; heart to heart we follow
the old road just like the out-of-town visitors we are.