Only the barest thread holds the current hours to minutes which have long since yielded to the universal sweep of time’s ruthless hands. In strange terrain, in unfamiliar weather, I move with clumsy steps. I keep thinking that I will find my groove. I strain to claim an easy flow here, in this place, to which I came nearly by accident.

I like my life. I dwell in a tiny house on wheels, a few feet below sea level adjacent to a serene river. Nights fall with gentle ease. The sunset flashes, the moonglow serenely passes through the sky. Wind raises the leaves of the old pin oak rising high above my blue steel roof. Succulents thrive on my porch as the radiant sun and the sweet moon kiss their sturdy shoots. Lights twinkle on the meadow throughout the evening. What darkness surrounds me yields to starlight. I should be content.

But faces that I have not seen in years haunt me. I contemplate my family’s fate and future. Worry clings to each raw breath that I pull into my body. I wear a smile but my heart beats heavy in my chest. I am here, now; I cast my lot westward when an upheaval seemed prudent. But oh, the ghosts! They gather round and cast baleful looks in my direction. They silently scorn my treachery.

The yearning for my old home carries no disrespect for those who populate my current days. I want it all. I want to walk the levee road along the San Joaquin yet sit on a bench by Lake Michigan with my son. If I had the chance, I would cleave the countryside between this river and the confluence of the Missouri with the Kaw, sending all the states between asunder. I could step from here to there. Like Alice slipping through the looking glass, I would have both worlds at hand.

The disembodied voices of my brothers and sisters come through the phone. My heart contracts. My son checks on me twice a day, the sorrow evident in my voice from time to time. There is, indeed, no place like home.

Yet here I am. That life happened a hundred years ago, and this one has seen a mere seven. Perhaps it deserves more commitment than I have yet mustered. If those whom I have left can but forgive me, perhaps the love that they have shown me will carry into something new.

Mugwumpishly tendered,

Corinne Corley

The Missouri Mugwump®

“Morning“, from Rivers to the Sea, 1915, Sara Teasdale

I went out on an April morning
      All alone, for my heart was high,
I was a child of the shining meadow,
      I was a sister of the sky.

There in the windy flood of morning
      Longing lifted its weight from me,
Lost as a sob in the midst of cheering,
      Swept as a sea-bird out to sea.