Speak to me of

Cozy hearths and dancing shadows

Birthday songs and tapping rain

conjuring, like a magician's wand,

myself, younger;

woken from sleep,

on the shadowed stairs listening to languid indistinct murmurs.

Give to me

one drop of peace to soothe my thirst

before I start to trudge again through Time, this great desert

which changes and erases and reclaims memories

like so many identical dunes of sand

back into its shapeless, shifting expanse.

Promise me, for

I am the broken-winged bird,

you are the nest

waiting between my flights of fancy

with warmth, a stoic mien.

A backyard of green weeds, a scuffed oak floor

Rooting me into existence.