Hometown Grays

I left for all the same reasons hometowns are left for--
to discover and be something discovered.

I pay the toll for leaving with an annual visit to that flat city 
creeping its complexes closer towards the interstate. 

I pity my friends who moved back
and my family who never left. 

I pity the big houses managerial jobs can buy 
and the big yards and big cars, big families with big appetites. 

I pity the small-town traffic between trademarked box-stores 
and the empty parking lots of the locally-owned and operated. 

I pity the galleries featuring wall-to-ceiling western art 
and the only Native Americans welcomed into dining rooms are on canvas.

I left for all the same reasons hometowns are left for--

I left to reach into landscapes my graduated class can’t pronounce.
I left to stretch my arms out wide until I touched nothing familiar. 

I left,
           
           but still wake most mornings listening for that boring mourning dove 
nestled on the telephone wire sagging over my old street.

In my absence I worry after her dull gray feathers. Is she still there-- 
calling over the backyard cottonwoods and grass alleys-- 

over the graves of my hamsters marked by rings of marbles--
over the strawberries my mother planted against the shallow brick wall.

That content hum soft and deep, spoken through a wooden reed, 
rising and falling in such a way it reinvents time to stretch out long 

like my old cat soaked in sunlight by the picture window
looking onto the neighbors--
                                                         whose names I’ve forgotten.

I try humming the soft high 
                                                    and low timbre
and I pity myself for missing a home I never stayed for.

First published in Weber Journal, Vol. 40, Fall 2023.