Homecoming
Debbie West

How can I tell you
How fragile are the places
We call Home?

The tyranny of progress
Goosesteps over the soul of Time,
It's mechanized heartbeat
As indifferent
As the concrete arteries we call Interstates.

Overpasses arabesque the sky;
And cars thread them
Like particles following atomic orbits.

Standing in the shadow of newly poured
Concrete,
With its promises of concrete riches,
No clue surfaces to tell this place form any other
When I enter the graveyard of my yesterdays.

If I myself didn't know
Hydrangea blossoms had once
Grown here, big as cabbages,
But blue.. light in your hands
As a clump of sky..

And if my memory weren't a treasure map
Pinpointing a matchbox cemetary
Where goldfish
Dreamt away the years...

If I couldn't see so clearly
The front porch step...
The open door...
Or know how many steps it took to get there,
Or under which rock in the yard, the salamander slept,
I might never have suspected
It ever existed.

I'm glad I wasn't there
When the trees were assaulted,
The garden scraped away,
The house moved, carted away,
Reassembled some other place.

Above the din of traffic,
I hear a faint echo of a ghostly stickhorse
Whose rasping wooden hoof
And two clattering sandaled feet
Canter rhythmically along a disappearing sidewalk.

I stand here,
Wishing memory could exchange the smell of asphalt and exhaust
For the scent of sunshine lingering in clean sheets on summer nights,
And could help me recall a time when time
Was measured in birdsongs...
How long it took to fill a coloring book...
How long it took a rainbow to dissolve...
How long for green apples to ripen on the bough.

I stand in view of home
And find...
This place.
I've not forgotten it,
But it has changed,
And it no longer remembers me.