The Memory Guard on Night Watch

We don’t leave home

home leaves us

first in baby steps 

then 

in giant ones

taken in stride,

until one day

in the slope-eyed 

gray-weathered future

a trapdoor 

cracks open

and 

we 

fall 

like feathering marionettes 

trapped like dust

in the slender hands of sunlight

onto the surface 

of the underworld of the heart

where all our loved ones 

and dogs with child hearts

disappear

like dreams and sighs

into the eternity of the swollen sea

which demands 

that after 

this year 

as the memory guard on night-watch 

I start again

with baby steps

along this unspooled scroll

of sand

that holds the holy map

of every footprint I’ve ever made.