The Sea Home Poem by Jan Oskar Hansen

Home from the sea

The night in the hallway paled into a yellowish screen
showing a black& white home- movie ca.1963
a memory time machine had sent him back to his years
of youth to meet people long since gone.
A family sat around a dinner table with people he knew.
His 125-year-old father was not there; he never was
a nectar-drinking Colibri, exotic as a Christmas present
never given, the one in a toy shop, a red firetruck with
wooden wheel.
And him? He had gone to the sea, and when he returned
it was not the same as before; a certain distance had
emerged after that whenever he came home
from the sea, the distance from them was ever wider.
They had known him as a boy but had not seen him grow.
He sat in the living room, rootless, a stranger they
Somehow were related and spoke politely to him
because they knew he would soon be leaving again.
A nurse shook him gently; are you awake?
Yes, mother, I'm home from the sea.