When You're That Person Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

home no more home to me, wither must I wander?
Robert Louis Stevenson

ah when you're that person

getting up and leaving the room
thinking you'll return, it'll just be a moment
the rainbows curve back on themselves but

the clouds come in
and someone's locked the doors.
you won't get back in

though you've worn the rugs clear through
in your time.
it's a gated day.

when you're this person,
what can you say:
open sesame?

starlight flings itself away
needlessly on the grasses
when there's no one left to

note it passes away.
they won't notice at all

your shadow missing
in the family picture.
but somewhere, birds cry

flocking nowhere.
somewhere the winds die down
and it isn't Oz anymore

my grieving child,
over the spent farms.

mary angela douglas 26 april 2015; 17 march 2016