Return (For Ellen) -- Daniel Halpern

Come back again and again, the fields no longer hold their colors on limbs of light over the earth, under the sky, over the soft dicondra, the clover and weeds that spread, that pressed their dark root systems into the rich fields. The old neighbors have passed quietly into the earth. Your family has broken down and is traveling. Still, this is where your mouth in humor first closed over the mouth of the girl who lived behind you, where you learned to live poised on the edge of talking. Come back, the fields are gone and your friends are gone, the girl behind you has married into another city, the roads out of town are direct now and fast, and everyone you knew is gone, or no longer wants to know you. But you must return, back to the long stretch of main street reaching across the entire length of the valley, back to the mild, mid-winter days around Christmas, back to what is now only remembered because nothing is the same here anymore. There are no fields, nothing edible on the land anymore–only the traffic moving this way, then back again, then back again. The light is no longer reflected in the earth but you return because there is always something that survives: come back again to old friends living against dark fields, come back again, the family holding dinner for you, come back, come back again.