the homecoming

we printed no ads and
no search parties went out
for the pieces that had gone missing.

they came home later.

it seems they had been buried
under debris from wars, explosions and collapses,
concrete blocks of unfathomable rage
and piles of unclarified drama.

i had imagined they were,
like dogs who run away from home
in the face of noisy firecrackers and explosions,
lost,
and unable to find their way home.

i thought they were dead, decayed, rotted,
but they came suddenly, soundlessly,
not the remains of the day,
or a skeletal mass or a thin shadow
but full bodied and whole hearted
and full of love,
these puppies, or pieces, or fragments of love
that had been left in the aisle
and forgotten about
now ready to come home.