REUNITED (poem for #audiomo day 14)

Reunited 

I left the house of my reincarnation

before the swallows returned

the year they cancelled the Grand National.

I walked out the door

before dawn disappeared, drove through a dream

as if in a dismal draft of corked Dolcetto.

I pitched my leaky tent in Wiltshire

’til forced out by a wife’s thirst

for regeneration.

Winter hardened the road I travelled

as I wished to wallow like a pig

in the hot mud Bladud found.

I sailed back to the Province of my birth

in a ferry beset by bleeding ballast,

into the storm of a tiger’s saliva 

whipped by Irish bankers, Roman bishops,

windy politicians and uncivil servants.

The rant of ravaged youths, refugees from famine,

coursed through my bloodstream, out my throat

and stained my pen.

I wrote resurrection out of my will.

until I flew to the city of surprised eyes,

composers’ minds,

mouthful feasts,

until I sat opposite my child in Southwark

speaking of the Golan, green with cotton,

forgetting Masada and the Dead Sea

and lived to swim again

among dreadlocks, hijabs, sidecurls, pale people

and more

until at last I greet myself

arriving at my own house

in my own skin

and we smile again

reunited over broken bread

and the words of one imagination.