The Trunk I Keep Packed

The crier called two berths at dawn, the wind had turned, and I did not go. Pack light, he said — a comb, a coat, one bolt of blue — and I did not go.

Fifteen mornings the Karvel has cracked its bed to reach the sea alone; even the river makes for the south in this drought, and I did not go.

I keep a small trunk in the mind, forever packed: the indigo, his name, the south the color of a vein held up to the light — and I did not go.

Promisa has answered thirty years with not yet, and meant here, now; I heard that oldest joke fall out of my own mouth today, and I did not go.

A sealed thing waits at the Customs Shed for a man no wharf has known — I have been that unclaimed cargo, addressed and set down, and I did not go.

And what is a loom but a ship that crosses the same blue water every day, that sails and sails and never clears the harbor mouth — and I did not go.

Zara — the shuttle you throw runs south each pass and returns by dusk to your hand; you have made the crossing ten thousand times in thread. That is why you did not go.