Inevitable Immigration

Inevitable Immigration
by Bryon Slack

Ash and embers float
with drifting incandescence
on the swirling winds
of my mind’s unrest.

Flames cast their hues
of anger and resentment
across my flushed cheeks
from where they dance
upon the flaming wreckage
of my life that was,
shadows twirling about
in rhythm with the charred
stem of the spent match
pinched like an afterthought
between idle fingers.

The cavorting conflagration
coalescing into caricatures
counseling caution from beneath
the camouflage of care,
projections of their own insecurity,
ungrounded in the truth
of my own courage — my conviction.

These cries fall upon ears
that no longer mark their words,
listening, instead, to a refrain from across
a wide blue expanse singing
a song of Home to my wanderlust heart—
lilting accents from an unfamiliar tongue
forming a chorus in harmony
with what had been only discordant
in its solitude, and my spirits lift.

Purpose finds its home in my stride,
propelling me forward toward
the Siren song — inexorable — to
the slowly warming banks
of a coming dawn on this eastern
horizon, holding heady promise,
rushing to meet a mind
already strolling ancient canals,
in patient waiting for my form
to rejoin it.