Prose Poem

Growing up a friend here where all things end, you and I are eventually left alone, seeped in regret.

Ran into you on a corner, near where the hillsides whispered our collective name, where the lawn broke through hard layers of dirt, where the ocean never stopped threatening to swallow us all, eventually.

Home only ever feels like home in some small way, how every creature sees and knows it. Every/one talks, writes and sings, to find their own place in your history.

Every day of a million souls passes slowly, every generation a new story of self, while new ones alternately linger or fall away.

From the hillside see the smoke settling into every valley, tendrils bullying their way through the very streets where we shed our skin.

From the land see ourselves reflected in the ocean. From the ocean look out and see eternity.

Like a spurned lover that had to leave but had nowhere else to go.

When the mountain crumbles, neighbors wind it back up, settle the dirt and rake the leaves, set back up in the same location.

“What if you knew?” strangers and friends alike will ask. Nobody can answer that they don’t.

There in the dead zone between the rubble and the palace, the little rabbit that could. Well, I mean yes and no. It’s always yes and no. Why I can’t embrace or run away.

Him or her or someone like them or either, face in any crowd.

Good score in times of war if you never have to see their faces.  

And that’s why we turn, return, restate, restock. Why we lower our flags long enough to see our neighbors and ourselves.  Because we know they are, be they rich, poor, or in between, and whose flags they fly or don’t fly.

We all are flammable, drownable, breakable, all settled to return eventually. Earth, the place we call home, for better, worse, or in between. More the other than what originally called us here.

8/9/26

(C) 2026 Dave Soyars