Homecoming

It was homecoming at my alma mater
And I stood at the Welcome Tent
A prodigal son, penniless, spent
A wandering squanderer
There was no mother, father
No friend running toward me
To slay the fattened calf
There was no welcome
At all
Just a tent
And a map to the familiar

I went unrecognized as I wondered
If 25 years were too many
For me to recognize my own memories
Or the dreams dreamt along the
Night-lined fringes of the Quad:

A rucksack of philosophy texts
Pulling one shoulder toward arthritis
A young philosopher
Unaware his path would be littered
With pages ripped from a hundred prayer books
Each dabbed in tears

I stood in the provost’s office
And listened to professional philosophers
Steeped in the tradition of profundity
Practiced in the argot of academia
The adoration of abstraction
And a lightning stroke of profanities
Coursed through this common mind
When the department chair spoke in
Tongues without fire
And repentance blasted through me
Like a cold-front on a barren plain:
“What the hell is he saying?”
Asked the crushing hailstones
And I sought cover beneath
Quiet incredulity and the promise
I’d never sound like that (again)

I spoke in haste, compressing 2.5 decades
Into a handshake, a canape
A splash of red wine
And when he assessed
The soundness of my
Abridged ontology
I saw a priest reach
Down and take bread from
The tip of my tongue

None could know I left the
Premises as presented
Or that I concluded that
(All things remaining equal)
Nothing remains equal
Not even between brothers
A simple syllogism
Crafted without fallacy
Carved on the oracle’s breast:
There is no home.


Without a father.

©2009/Contratimes. All rights reserved.