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Homing<br />
Cu Fleshman<br />
I.<br />
It wasn’t like the summer flowed,<br />
or even slipped, past.<br />
Your three months left you<br />
in minutes and seconds<br />
of cussing the Southern heat with old friends,<br />
of watching horseflies swarm<br />
in a jade haze over the coppery<br />
mud below your home.<br />
II.<br />
You counted down your lasts.<br />
There was the last walk down your street<br />
in the white moonlight, Spanish moss bearding<br />
the pines. There was the drive to the<br />
blue mountains, packed into<br />
the car taking your final bite of Carolina peach,<br />
juices painting your chin. On your last good day,<br />
you drank Lake Fontana<br />
down to its red dust,<br />
and cried yourself to sleep.<br />
III.<br />
Like the pigeons flocking overhead. Like a device,<br />
like the way you hate California,<br />
all its pale gold and heartless grit.<br />
Like your best friend’s voice, in the pinkish glow<br />
of the last night you saw him saying, Please<br />
come home soon.
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