Time is the solution in which the living
and the dead confer—there’s no other place for us
or them and there’s no other place to be
(except where we are), putting our feet up
on the balcony and staring out at the empty
plain—where everything is invisible and everyone
has a name (the only way back is the way
you came), and once I played Odysseus
to her Penelope, way back when, and we stepped
from the bath in someone else’s house,
and once all the lights went out in the middle
of the night and we built a fire until the storm
abated, and later—it’s getting late in the day—
we’ll have caviar and champagne—at the edge
of the crater on the Sea of Dreams,
and look down to earth as if it was all one
and the same, and leave our footprints
for those who follow.
from Alien Abduction