diomedea exulans ithicas

This did not belong around my neck,
this big shotgun pistol, yet there it was.
The last free one of its kind, perhaps,
and likely I'll never see another,
and for a while that was enough,
reason enough to bear the weight.
But gradually, inevitably I bent,
gradually the tether loosened
and the wanderer slipped away
into a further state of exile
around, perhaps, a stiffer neck.
But it seems to still hang here,
that big old pistol does,
in this thin seam of memory,
this supposedly navigable place
beyond necessity but not yet to acceptance,
where I am rarely at rest.