How does one know
where one should be?
I have a few memories
which are timeless.
They belong nowhere
so they belong to me
in a quiet, space-less way.
Was it a past life, where a road of trees
stretched in an autumn morning,
cool, leading to a mystery?
Was it a French summer,
a place whose words belonged to themselves?
I see arching branches
and live strangely,
wearing dark clothes and being young.
The other is also a place.
A gray house with day lilies by Lake Erie.
It looms silently among its trees.
The lake smells of wet fragrance,
berries, crawfish and mossy stones.
I don’t live there,
but I go there.
Somewhere, past the third closest star,
where in space-less time
I visit for a moment,
I follow the tracks of old rails
with weeds growing in the trellises,
dandelions and lambs quarters.
Where I belong however
can not decide itself.
I am making a new star every day.
Pulling books from the shelves,
worrying about the not-done things
that never need to be done,
and doing things which never need doing.
In a way we are all homeless.
Nothing is still,
so we can not be complete.
Love persists,
but it goes into the distance.
Fear subsides like a tide
and comes back.
Hope gleams like a star
submerged in water.
And all the time,
we leave one pair of arms
for another,
going down tracks where
a great engine rumbles,
and I throw apples to soldiers,
a train passing in front of a yard,
going off,
disappearing,
with the perfume of apples on my fingers.