The Old Prophet

Your skin folds softly into later age,
and your lips are the peanut shells around prayers.
You stroll the neighborhood,
the rings of saturn around your ankles.

You raise your hands up to receive
the morning sunlight, and sniff
the wet air thinking of when you were 20
and shy as a bat. You chain-smoked

in the basement that was your father's
laundry business. you were always moist,
smelling of detergent and smoke, and escaped
in the night to lurk at gas stations,

burning fuel, and picking your cuticles.

forty-five years later, you have walked the cow-patties
of India to the promise land, and fed your Israeli wife
ripened milk with blueberries and honey. and awoke
9 years later, to find your cheeks wet and your wife weary.

there is no such thing as returning.

You stroll with the prattling on of birds,
of the just-before dawn, and return home
to find scattered plates which you'll wash,
and an empty matchbox, that you'll pocket

and fidget with your dry, cracked nail.