Return
Suddenly I craved recess from that noisy
house, from that pack, from much older cousins
and all those aunts and uncles, half a dozen
at a time who laughed at my teasing stories.
Their voices seemed to multiply and push me
outside somehow. I didn’t know the reason
exactly: it was not some new aversion
to them—I loved them—but to any company
at all. And so I learned to disappear
into the space beneath the ball-like bush
out front, to part its thick soft leaves and sheer
white flowers and rest in its green womb, to push
my spine against its barky spine, to peer
at my dog Elvis smiling in that hushed
cool world until a fresh
strange little tune made itself in my mind
and spilled out whispered on my lips, a kind
of story bound to steer
itself by song, a story I would tell
them all when I went back, whenever I fell
to wanting them, the spell
of silence undone by a little wash
of loneliness I knew would push me, force
me back to that packed house.
From Places I Was Dreaming
By Loren Graham
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