where are they?—withdrawn

like anemones; not afraid, not at all,

but wary; and why not, 

filled with knowledge, unassailable

truth hard won; or, hard lost?

i ask, where are they?—i am no less wary,

and no less weary, of eyes

upon me, of looking through these windows

through these eyes, of the wrongness

of waking, again and again, to this.

so i ask, where are they? not here,

that i know. have they retreated

to a wine-dark sea, a rocky, aegean refuge,

a white-sand caribbean key, crusoed?—or,

simply, within four walls, perhaps next door?