This is a poem called Routes, R-O-U-T-E-S.
Not too long ago I was back home,
home where I was raised in Pennsylvania.
And I hadn't been back for years.
And I don't think that's an uncommon experience
of going back to a place where you've grown up
and finding the sort of ambiguity of feelings
that that place seems to arouse in which you're always
sort of finding yourself around the corner
or at least a part of yourself.
It's in two parts and I'll simply
pause between them, Routes.
Sun drops below the elms, moon comes along and freezes
the wheels of the street.
In her room, my mother shakes out her rod of dark colors
and knits the first step.
My window faces the funeral home.
When the exhaust fan starts to hum, something is flying,
something is leaving at the level of the trees.
I enter a street where the sun is falling.
I look over my shoulder and follow
a thread that was my coat.
At its end is a vacant room and a little bench of sleep. .
I sit down quietly.
A few others arrive their eyelashes
shining like crystals.
One coughs in a cloud of incense, one
closes his silver telescope.
The lost town circles overhead in the dark,
the houses hang out their lanterns.
On a blue bike I race the shadows of the trees.