My Storyteller

You can’t sleep long enough
my story teller
to dream them whole again
once as one as we .
The fabric’s over, warped,
yellowed now, brittle, crumbling.
Loom is now ahead
for someone else
this fresh homespun to come.

We traveled in story land, we two
together
owl, perhaps
and pussycat.
You built and sailed our boat,
conjured up our sea.
We traveled toward horizon
which, setting out,
was just as far as we could see.
Now here we are beyond all that;
horizon’s now astern.
Your chart of tales did not foretell
that the Land of Real Things,
so myopic of our going out
charges heavy tolls
for coming back in.
You told no money in our pocket
real enough for both of us to spend
or for the passage home.

You can’t come out, my mother
now
and I can’t come home again,
or in.