The Return - Edith Tiempo

It the dead years could shake their skinny and run

As once he had circled this house in thirty counts,

He would enter this door and these old friends would not shun

Him and his tales, tales that would bear more than the spare

Testimony of his willed wit and his grey hairs.

He would among them, the fatted meat about his mouth,

As he told of how he had lived on strange boats on strange waters,

Of strategems with lean sly winds,

Of the times death went coughing like a sick man on the motors;

Their breaths would rise hot and pungent as the lemons rinds

ln their cups and sniff at the odors

Of his past like dogs at dried bones behind a hedge,

And he would live in the whispers and locked heads.

Wheeling around and around and turning back was where he started

The turn to the pasture, a swift streak under a boy's running;

The swing, up a few times and he had all the earth he wanted;

The tower trees, and not so tall as he had imagined;

The rocking chair on the porch, you pushed it and it started rocking,

And abruptly stopped. He, too, stopped in the doorway, chagrined.

He would go among them but he would not tell, he could be smart,

He, an old man cracking the bones of his embarrassment apart.

---

Edith Cutaran Lopez-Tiempo (1919 - 2011) Philippines

Source: Scribd