From Over Here

From over here it seems
that things have changed:
a view I had for years
deemed more than fair
is now uncanny.

The layers of life themselves
remain unchanged – 
the boy, the adolescent and
the man – 
but now the stories woven ‘twixt the scenes
do not make sense.

It is not merely rhyme that’s lost its way:
grammar
syntax too
no longer hold.
The warp and weft of meaning
shimmers in
the vertigo
of this unsettled now.

There is no hedge, no idling babbled brook
across which one may back and forth
at will.
Over here the ground itself has sheared;
no story seems equipped to bridge the rift.

The last part of the journey, deep and slow,
did not seem like an earthquake at the time;
terrible, yes, and maddening, and hard
and beautiful and crazy and sublime.

And I am changed.

The I regarding I from over here
sees strange successions, cradled, then
set free.