Dry Docked

everything now aloft
nothing is official
i'm as unsure of next week as I am of next year
this makes the hours of a single day seem scattered as 24 shades of half light
the army might ground me, but I already have
boots on the ground as the best case scenario, but even heading home?

i had an eerie run in with a sergeant who just came to Bragg from the unit i have orders for in Drum: April deployment to an area near Kandahar, south Afghanistan he told me and added: "...the worst a.o. in theater...better keep your finger on the trigger from the time you walk off the plane..."
but i don't know what's gonna happen now

once i left for good, when i joined, i finally had a home
after all the years
the family all in one town, once again
now that there is somewhere to return to, i can't
or is that the direction things are going?
the wilderness is for wandering, and i'm feeling kinda lost without it
years in the wilderness, wasted years
i can't imagine reality
as i face my blindness

sober at dawn, sober at dusk
just sleep for my bed rather than sleeping it off
last night was a big deal
and only i knew it
i sat at a table, socially awkward with friends, various bottles about, and me, the only one drinking water
perhaps the first time in my life this has ever happened but...
i did it

but it's just a bust balloon
a victory that felt like an exercise
could smell their beer and wine the whole time
even after an expensive steak arrived in front of me
there is never a thrill in doing the right thing, just the boring prudence
the mundane avoidance of recovering from thrills

could be this is the humble adulthood i've sometimes pretended
but grounded?
no flying, no falling, just earth, my feet, and relentless gravity
not getting any younger, just getting old a little less quickly
just as my ducks are in a row
i let the chicken cross the road

i live with the qualitative shift of a rational recovery that only i know by heart
the heads in battalion want to quantify my progress with incidents and attendance
sergeant major asked why i joined the army
part of my explanation was that at the time i was
"...looking for a rudder..."
he said im about to be lost at sea without a jacket

i know better
but have no proof
anchored on time
i'm not hiding a weapon of mass destruction
just opening up a history of self destruction...

...releasing it

and i know my progress is real