Find your way back, take the long route that

sidles by the lake, blinding your troubles.

Every kind of wave flashes like stars

lining a long night of memories.

You had it then, a certainty of laughter

as you all circled at evening’s fire.

Spinning tunes or tales, one more, another,

tongues of smoke lassoing you. Such headiness.

And morning kissed your eyelids as

the bay curled around front porches

and boats rocked, impatient,

white sails slack as summered thinking,

until they came alive under your hands.

Nothing could be better,

you thought. And much after that

was not such an benign adventure.

You speak of that life as if it was

a kind of holiness in childhood and youth.

Go, find your way back,

take the long route that carries you

back to bright rustlings, sailing

into the wind, bronzed and lionhearted;

reawaken that appetite for joy and its mercy