The bald neighbour boy from your childhood
            never grew up,
not heeding time
    that carries us farther and farther from familiar shores.
His soft chestnut curls, shaved for the summer
with a pre-war razor, never grew back.
No, he did not drown,
        there wasn’t a deep river close by
with the exception of the languid flow of time, eroding the shores.
His mother, forgetting, often went out onto the porch
to call him from his carefree children’s games
from which it was so hard to return home on time –
and he didn’t come back.
        Even at night.
            Even in the winter.  
Even when you were all grown up and suddenly realized
that you gave your son the same name . . .