Are There Rules?

Are There Rules?

Of crossings: one, and then another,
over a fisherman's net of water, steel-coloured,
beneath the high and secretive grasses.
Here, the bare cypress trees are wailing figures,
thrown from the banks, their hands
scraping at the silent faces of the sky,
dressed in grey tatters.
Are there rules of grief?
This home is never still.
The water reaches up, a constant taking.
There are days I cannot find myself
between the steps of my parents' porch
and the long, sighing descent of afternoon rain.
Each departure feels absolute.
Time accelerates in my absence,
so now she does not recognise my face,
and the house sinks deeper
into the unkempt, hushed green.
How much remembrance can a vessel hold
before it changes cargo on the wave?
How long can a man at sea
bear the name of husband
before he is simply a man who is lost?
Between this shore and what is not,
I approach, as all strangers do,
to knock and wait upon the threshold
for the stranger who will answer.
Are there rules? Only the water's claim,
The moss that teaches letting go,
The slow, sure sinking of a name,
And that each coming is a kind of woe.
The only rule: there is no coming back the same.