Recovery Poem by James Byrne

Let me imagine you coming home
from the dark, between body and mind,

making evidence of yourself
the way a tree waves up from its shadow.

There are dinner-halls you have silenced
with a single spark of wit,

there are men you have governed
through pure scent, pure posture.

Now for your most difficult trick:
to restart a life that ends by turning into gold.

In September (the month that tends to all others)
let me be able to conjure your best side,

to have some kind of grip on the intactness
of living, the way mirrors do.