Leaving Rehab

Leaving Rehab

…all you can see are my travels

and they are the least of me,

not the one who has arrived.

                                     Marriage—(Ulysses)

                                     David Whyte

It comes to who do you take with you

in a pack all your own, snd then who

can you not do without?  bound

to be disappointments, the pile

rises and shrinks like a tide

in the middle of this month’s moon:

slack calf and then hip and then,

because you have not turned yet

to go, lip and a trickle of salt

between the teeth.  The tongue

knows more than it lets on or allows

and brine, this brine, is the very

mineral it needs: the flecks of gold

no one has ever really known

how to pan or mine are left behind

when the tide turns again and once

the land is dry for the moment

(knowing seas it all returns

sometimes clean sometimes debris)

it is time to take on the strongest

villains, the gracious angels,

and watch the navies collide inside

the heart and mind and be

surprised, be awed and surprised,

(who’s alive at the end?) who tries

out of the rope and foam, who gropes

for it, survived and you’d like to

say you read ahead, you knew but

you didn’t quite, you’d missed some

subtlety in your drowning, didn’t you? 
Yes,

the story was written for you and through

it your torment I wouldn’t do I wouldn’t

do but you didn’t do did you when it was

your turn really you shrunk back in it,

you swallowed the whole boat load, didn’t

you? 

No.  No I didn’t.  I was the only one

who didn’t.  Prove it?  Prove it?  Well,

I’ve arrived, haven’t I?  I'm here, right?