Home	Do we come back ?     A Poem by Rebecca Jessup
A List of Friends	The waitress and the architect and the singer and I Arrived with the engineer, just after the professor, Worked with the stripper, helping the linguist, on orders from the welder.
A Poem
Memories
	I had come from the woods by the stream, You had come from the mountains, They had sailed in from the islands, Others from the city, just north of the desert. Some from London, New York, Auckland, Copenhagen, Jo-burg, Munich, Sussex, Boston, Paris, Morocco. We flew to Edinburgh, To Lisbon, to Rabat, to Madeira, to LA.
	We felt the same summons, Some bugle call that only we could hear. We showed up, we helped, we did what we could, And more, and more. More than we could. We lifted and hauled, we studied, we worked, We ran till we fell, we trudged, we saluted. We worked the gig, gave all we had, and more.
	Until the bugle died, Until time ran out, Until the clock stopped, The mission failed, Our bodies failed, The Old Man left, The rats and roaches took over the show.
	Mostly we didn't hug or weep. Mostly we didn't say good bye. For us there is no good-bye; we had never said hello. We ceased to appear there, We ceased to cohere.
	You drove away, she walked. Some were driven out. He flew, some fled. Some of us just snuck out the back.
	We all went variously off to find or build some rest-stop homes, Where we still are, Living, dying, loving, working, Listening with our innermost hearts, Waiting, maybe forever,
	For the next time, For the bugle call that only we can hear.