IN A THOUSAND OTHER WORLDS - Poem

In a Thousand Other Worlds"
 
(copyright 2020, by Dave Kiffer)
 
In a thousand other worlds
This morning would have been different.
You would have risen at dawn,
Fiddled with your bitter coffee
And emptied the night bucket
That you had used hours before.
 
You might have cranked the engine
Even though we were at the dock
Because you knew the sound would
Wake me and I would make breakfast,
Three eggs and the leftover meat
After two weeks away at sea.
 
You would have set me to polishing spoons
As you went to town for supplies
And picked groceries for two more weeks
Seeking salmon farther up the coast
Even though I wanted desperately
To go back south, to go home.
 
In the afternoon, we would have
Taken a cab to the small airport and
Picked up Mom from her flight
And you would have pretended
To be happy to see her and maybe,
Just maybe, you would have been.
 
And then we would have loaded her,
And her suitcase, onto the boat and
Headed north, to a place you hadn't
Been in thirty years, chasing the salmon
You had caught in your twenties,
Before everything had changed.
 
But that is the not the morning
That happened in this world,
And, after you used the bucket,
I awoke to a world in which everything
Down to the bloody socks on my feet
Had changed, utterly, in an instant.
 
You had left the insular little world
That you had built with your own hands
And I was at a loss for how it all
Went together, how to make the parts
Rattle and hum, the wooden keel creak
And the boat turn back, toward home.


 

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