Think you can turn back time
With a message?
A comment?
A like?
A card?
A phone call?
A surprise visit?
It wouldn’t matter.
Too much water’s passed
Beneath that bridge,
Too much current’s eroded
Its structure.
Marked now only by a swirling eddy,
An impression of what once stood,
The span, the supports
All swept away, out to sea
With a ship that
Sailed long ago,
Christened My
Best Friend Forever,
Reflagged under
A jack of convenience,
Sold and renamed
A Man I Used to Know.
A familiar face in the grocery store,
A curbside conversation,
Both our eyes darting
Left and right, brown and hazel
Seeking the slightest spark of
Recognition of the person before.
Moon Dog? Moogie?
Is that you? You still in there?
Until we each return to the
South Sea isolation of
Our shipwrecked existence,
Marooned with our native wives,
With another sea story to share,
Another hey, remember when,
Another no shit there I was,
Another castaway tale,
Hoarded like doubloons
Marked on an X-stained memory map,
Buried beneath the ever-shifting sands of
Our salt-washed lives.
© 2023 Edward P. Morgan III
