Thursday, November 17, 2005

21. MOVING - Ted Walker

Do not attempt to sleep —your strangeness
Arouses the new house. Amazed floors,
Unaccustomed yet to what is yours,
Shift to the burden of what you bring;
Overhead, the loft that encloses

A fresh store of sentimental junk
Creaks from your broken bits of childhood.
Sometimes maybe it’s all to the good
To touch, to rearrange all you own
Elsewhere. But in someone else’s sink,

Though it’s yours now and paid for, even
A cup can remind you of who you are,
And what you were, and why you are here .
From choice, or by accident, or both,
Once more you’ve humped your stuff. The oven

Was worst, its squat, impervious bulk
Grudging each inch. Yet plain heaviness,
Lifted and lifted, doesn’t oppress
Like those gross abstracts we can’t dispose
Of. They arrive with the morning milk.