A house we barely inhabit

Places There Are

There are places where water is drawn up delicately from
rock, its tenuous entwine released one finger after the other
until naked sand runs through and time again moves freely.

There are places planes fall from perilous skies, oceans
that give little of it back, the remembrance of such things
strewn as deep mementos kept within a vaster recollection.

There are places we dare to go only with the lights on,
familiar routes through rooms of a house we barely inhabit
but for practical furnishings that belie unseen discomfort.



There are places we seldom visit, limbs and hearts given
over to purposes not our own, feet whose minds were
beset to trod some journey we dared imagine as ours.

There are places that hold no name, mapless, disencompassed,
defined in shifting borders that cannot be staked or claimed,
places we wander through eyeless and smiling, calling it home.

Joseph Gallo
June 2, 2009