Status Updates From Raft

A MEETING AFTER MANY YEARS

Our words were a few colorful leaves
afloat on a very old silence,

the kind with a terrifying undertow,
and we stood right at its edge,

wrapping ourselves in our arms
because of the chill, and with old voices

called back and forth across all those years
until we could bear it no longer,

and turned from each other,
and walked away into our lives.