When We Left

How many quarrels, scary hurdles
Have we drawn and quartered, five years on?

When we left that one time, we had friends

As different from our friends these days as we
Have become different from our former selves
And just as exactly the same. No shame

In doing what the world does just as it does
Everywhere continually and at once.
We become more languid as we unwind words

From the spool of ever-gathering thread.
We become more and more entirely us
As we were not when we were what we've lost.

We're aging. We've grown strange. Just five years
Since we left for here, back, here, back, here. . . .