Home

It was more than sentiment, more than familiar,
more than that persistent love
impossibly respiring in the corners
when the other occupants left me alone
one weekend.
It was the empty chair, left out of place,
uncaring whether its last user might return,
identity secure in its distinctive history--
sensed more than known.

Now I marvel at the ease
of turning back the years,
and in the picture of a memory
to see not words or faces,
merely furniture, a still in time,
a mental photograph,
poised to take again its function
hours or centuries ahead, no matter;
I, caught standing there
inside the silent room,
gave welcome to the flooded chest
that comes from that outrageous mix
of absolute contentment
and the pain of loneliness.

The mind is fond of this obsessive gazing,
tracing the indelible perspective
of a moment that would never count
as even an event,
never take its place in stories
one would share--
and yet make wonderment a part
of those few dust-encrusted seconds
long ago
when only pathos was perfection...

It was then I knew
for once I did not dare
to take a single step away.
I've not been home again.
~