Martian Interlude

For two or three days
you could not remember a thing.
You carried a mirror everywhere.
The bluish doubt, still there,
unexamined.

You thought about water too much.
So many contexts.
That you had left.
There had been a baptism.
The water was hard and cold.
The bridge shone and shook.

The radio in your head was maroon,
a motorola, smaller than a lunch box,
that flipped open in the front.
The front cover became an antenna.
The handle on top flexed
like a watch band.
A question grew then.
How could anything so large
reside inside.
But you were the one who
heard yourself say,
 "come in."

Years later your brother found
the radio in his inventory.
He laughed over the tubes and
the big batteries that had powered
it at the gulf shore and the shimmering,
scooped-out,  private lake
owned by Germans.
The radio was a reminder,
like the boomerang,
of something you had put out there
because you wanted to.
So this was a history?
It will fit nowhere unless
you set it down.
"Land," they said,
"you must land now."