LAURIE KOENSGEN

To My Grown Son Visiting Home       

Everything slows here, 
flows old school:

soap in its cake
not shot from a dispenser,    
clothes pegs on the line    
last summer’s Morse code.

The news winds idly	
through rivulets of print,
sifting little wisdoms       	       
in its wake.    

	You’re recharging
	with an espresso somewhere,
	to shake off the dust 
	that collected in your sleep.

Memory moves in me  
like rice in a rainstick,            
elegiac, 
grain by grain. 
				  
Bent over a slow pour,
my humid fistprint 
on the countertop 
a snail,

I will still be here 
when you get back.