I get my start on the stairs again
where I’m awaiting some notion of home
to squirrel into the box I’ve put out for it.
Once again I’m reopening the world at page one
and then passed off from lap to lap
with a face that I’ve punched out of cardboard
and had put on me with nothing but string.
And how much one has talked into truth
just to keep one’s self safe one can never be sure.
Why else the trunk full of blankets and snack cakes?
For when our tires return those dark shapes to the woods.
X the way of not having to say anymore.
In that animal-warmth I grew stiller and stiller,
you rocking me back to that silence we shared.
The past is either different or dead--these places
we keep empty too deep for any memory.
April, and much more of that long March
that’s been with us since September.
Where each tree has been bested into question mark
and every bird taken down by its shadow.
Tell me God, who would have me in this state?
What passes for life here could pass for life anywhere
or the words we have had to put down as if song.
So sleep house like I remember you sleeping
when I would smirk on everything that we owned
until it had almost shone something of home.
And let this be where I will always leave off.
by Mark DeCarteret, (c)2006
First appeared in What is Home (Portsmouth Poet Laureate Program, 2006)