Cecelia Hagen The Exile Returns in Theory I'll go back to Lynchburg late in July, when the hills sweat at dawn and the blackflies caucus. I'll rent a room in a run-down motel whose sagging window screens let in catbird and cardinal reveilles long before I'm awake to hear them and long after. I'll buy jug wine at the corner store and drink it in front of the TV's blue light when it's too late for fireflies. I'll remember the phone calls, the funerals, the refusals. In my rental car I'll drive to Natural Bridge, where the father of our country carved his initials on an early survey. So many tourists around me, some with handbags on their arms, some with little dogs. They won't know how it used to be, and I won't know why I'm there, the land surrendered, open to everyone. I'll carry my hangover like a secret key, comparing the rounded foothills to the tall peaks that edge the place I live now. The notion of home will shift, still uninitialled, so unlike this historic theme park, land of regrets, the vulgar beauty I can't resist loving a little more than I want. Early Walnuts All the jetboats are docked for the season by now, and Wilbur has hung up his captain's hat on the burned-out beer sign in the basement game room/bar. The bookshelves hold recent paperbacks whose their spines are lined with white cracks from being so loved, so often laid face-down. He named the boat DeeAnn to appease his wife who was unhappy about many things. She went out in it twice, her lips tight, her hair blowing. She's gone, three summers after he bought the boat which, he now sees is true, they couldn't afford. But didn't the lake look pretty from behind the wheel, didn't the town take on a friendlier quality as it receded? Almost beckoning him to return, almost promising an easy way to be a better man. The evening wind picks up, blows down the early walnuts, the ones not worth opening. They hit the roof with sour little knocks. Wilbur hears every one. Drawings by an Unknown Person Walking home from martinis at First & First.            Lower East side, burned-out building. Five dollars a page for the whole book,                        he said, $180. Drunk, you bought it. You hid it from your wife, the child-like drawings, the big heads.             Six months later the guy calls. He's off drugs, out of prison, living in Montauk.     Some Italians want to buy the book for $500. You refuse, take it out, re-examine. about Cecelia Hagen