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Another place


Each day you expect something more of tomorrow
but when you have been in the same place for a year
the days rapidly become duplicates.

And so we travel from eye color to eye color
pack the cuddlies and let the suitcase get shabbier
as we pass through the gleaming temple of the transit hall.

I suppose I prefer sitting on a bench
down by the games field and wait for
the thunderclouds to gather
that a bolt of lightning strikes in my arteries, lights me up
with all of the blood's ramifications pulsing yellowly
and still you suddenly are
another place.

You wake to the sound of the bell by the raillway crossing
and remember that the train is a glowing animal in the night
the travelers temporarily cripples in the abyss of sleep
but also that insects sleeps in the corollas of poppies
that houses stand as empty hulls, fragile coccoons
awaiting the mortar of new breaths.

Nobody knows the following day
but we all surely recall the sound of the moving van on the gravel
the fine dust of blackboard chalk on the kitchen table
or the bed put together so you can wake up
giddy from another sun
even though you may never have been there, in this house
erected on the fringe of a dream.

I am always sure of where I belong
with the old people up on the cemetary hill
in the warm clay beneath thuja and box
in the garden with a stripe of sunshine bright in her hair
the surf of the grain yellow like the farmhouses' gables
and in the city where every single street is familiar.

Still, you suddenly are another place
the stairs wind up through the station hall
all by itself the elevator starts
and you arrive at the right level in the building
without ever being sure
that it was there you came from.

 

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