When This Veteran Came Home

I am young and old, here and now, then and yet to be. A 41-year-old husband and father, a 21-year-old kid upon the sea, and the child loved by his father’s fists. I am a convergence removed from time and space in temporary condition only to be returned to find former things replaced by new. The world did not wait for me, and in many ways, nor I it. And like myself, it was familiar in appearance but radically transformed.