THE BAVARIAN PINE VOLE RETURNS

Forty years of absence.
Has he missed his former home
the only one the others thought

he wanted, early Sunday
banquets of delicately
flavored sprouts

with the whole family,
only to surface someplace
so close by? A different

dewy meadow
he was sure had better grass.
All these years

the pretense he was a common
cousin. A lesson taken
from Poe to hide

in an exposed position.
Through attributed extinction
relieved of accumulated debt.

A little nip and tuck,
a fake ID card
to smooth the vanishing.

What does he want
now, the wife, children long
since gone? Perhaps

to play the Lazarus part
in the community's
summer theater.

— Susan H. Case