REUNION WEEKEND Poem by Claudia Emerson

Not only was she secluded from her family and the community, but an attempt was made to seclude the world from her.
Thirty years later, drunk on red wine, they will return
to wander the halls, searching for a certain

room, its window still memorized - will delight
in finding through familiar panes the moon rising

just the way it had when they'd lain sleepless
beneath it. But they cannot return to the twin bed,

long assigned, reassigned to some other
possibility sick for home, another

disappointment - the room itself practicing
what they will have come to prove cannot be finished.