Home again on the seam
where oceans meet,
he finds his body

no longer fits its
borrowed land, has
grown across water.

He learns to leave this city

is two people: one stays
close to shore, withdraws to a dry
given space between trees;

one travels the uneven road

of a new interior, waiting always
for the correct fall of rain.

He learns to leave is just one
person, to return two.

He becomes two people
in this Cape of Good Hope,
unmatched by a coming and going.

His misplaced hands
want only what they remember holding:

a hard shell
on an early beach
smoothed and broken perfectly. His

faulty legs want only
to negotiate again
a familiar strand,
a solid piece of earth.

Awkward in his first
land, he is lost marking tides.
He remembers waves falling easily
onto themselves,

water returning surely
while it can.  

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Born and raised in South Africa, Adrian Lurssen now lives in Inverness, CA, north of San Francisco. Recently his work has appeared in AGNI Online, AUGHT, Can we have our ball back?, Watershed, and elsewhere. He serves on the board of ZYZZYVA, the journal of West Coast artists & writers.  

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