Echo Machine
It’s a homespun kind of sadness
(Homespun? What’s that?)
And the boreens without names twist out
Of history into the future
Where you are past tense
And I cling to the recordings
Because that’s all that’s left:
An echo machine
And faded dreams of a relationship
No one understands –
Idol? No, I listen to you
But do my own thing
(And that’s what you want).
I love you precisely because you are
Messy, flawed, human.
Mentor? Sort of, but that’s not correct exactly.
Da. That’s the word.
But only an echo,
Yet when an echo is all a child has
The child will take it and be grateful.
And you know it, because you still are one
In your own druid, warrior, poet
Way. You know how a child learns
And rejects and clings to and rebels against
The echo machine.
“Kids, ignore your parents.”
But we both know kids
Never ignore. And Home
Is never a place.