National Poetry Day- home poem

After I Went Home

After, I still went home, there was no other

word for it, altered as a paper house, folded

into the shape of a box. I opened the same door,

stepped into the cold hall and thought of Eskimo’s,

I could use a hundred words for home.

These rooms now, the same, their womb

like shed tights still baring the shape of feet, lives.

In a scratched wooden bowl a purple key.

The next door opened easily, gasped in my face,

I thought of feathers on a bird by the road.

Just as we had left it, this lounge, the thin skin

of the plastic couch weathered and cool

without limbs, hands, to give it breath.

Two mugs on the floor, one spilled and dried,

Two pink plates, sandwiches cut into triangles

Neat as hospital corners, curled as fingers,

A film of the cruelty of air across sliced egg.

Who where we here? I thought, how did

anyone ever take arrange bread on a rim like a zodiac sun

and think it mattered? How did we live never thinking

these ordinary things would be reminders of scenes of kindness?

A sift of cinnamon freckling the surface of coffee

dissolved to liquid and I did not see it.

These cups with their cataracts of old milk

meet my eye, novelty shapes on the foam gone,

the intention holding strong.

I never looked and saw an ant drowning in sugar

or a note in a bottle. I never thought one clean patch of carpet

in this room I know like moving hands would look like a map

I’d press my face nose to, bury myself in its shag,

but still can’t read to make my way home.