- By Ryan Oliveira
Iowa (a hawk returns)

The road to Iowa is paved with expectations,
two hundred miles long - among them littered
the adhesive strips of memories, along where
one slips the tongue upon the slit, fusing
bitter winter and paper-thin wafer without
a cut…
But the distance you give makes the villagers
double-take. They always thought you alive,
seated in the same spot, sputtering sage leaves
while you remained rooted in a computer, one
hard drive like a tombstone etching birth, death,
one more…
One more, the sages echo; one more sentence of
the man you once were. And now you are the
phantom, spinning on some hipster Coruscant,
assumed forgotten, now a spit-take on the floor
made flesh in the whip-flash, flaunting as you say,
“I’m here…!”
You’re here, and feeling not here, not there, not
a tree weathering anywhere, wint’ring in reverse,
to over-winded welcomes and melting into warm
minestrones of dreams, screaming into ice cream
bowls, wishing your return a sunshine, becoming of
a hawk…
But you caw away, guffaw in a lobby where you
once roosted, singing half-hymns of springtime,
proud of the townsfolk, stranger to yourself.
‘Til then, you nestle in a slowly dying hearth,
chirping one-days to stay forever-long, one-day…
one day.
#Iowa #UniversityofIowa #success #winter #ghosts #oneday #foreverlong #hawkeye #visitsnotvacations