Leaving Home

When I see the photographs now of the
very empty house when
the movers had come and taken
everything away
(remember they left the blue runner)
I think about change,
how blithely we walk into
uncertainty, how on the
before side of after, we do
not yet feel the loss, the distance
has not lengthened into the past.
That night when the house was
finally empty, before I left and closed
the door of my house
one last time, I
filled my deep bathtub with cool water
and eased my tired body down
and tried to memorize the
moment and the place.  I summoned
memories and went about tucking
them into my mind and heart.  Later,
tub empty, lights off, dressed again
and ready to leave for good,
I knelt on the hardwood floor of the
kitchen and thanked my house
and kissed my house
goodbye.

One Summer's Day

My version has you going 
outside on a summer’s day. You
put playing cards in the spokes
of your bike and you rode it
fast
around the block
clickety clack click.
You liked the sound.  You 
got off that bike and
stood, beaming and
proud, hands on hips and
breathing hard from pedaling so
fast.
(so long ago)
I was inside my own housebaking my first pie, an error of
mulberries in a hot oven
nothing more
and I was waiting 
in the back hall holding
fast
to a kitten who was sick
maybe dying and yet I would not
let go
until it got sick all over my shirt and I can still
remember
feeling such disappointment
in the kitten and my pie.
There we were all those years later
just innocent victims of Fate.