Autumn Perspective

Now, moving in, cartons on the floor
The radio playing to bare walls
Picture hooks left stranded
In the unsoiled squares where paintings were
And something reminding us
This is like all other moving days;
Finding the dirty ends of someone else's life
Hair fallen in the sink, a peach pit
And burned-out matches in the corner;
Things not preserved, yet never swept away
Like fragments of disturbing dreams
We stumble on all day
In ordering our lives, we will discard them
Scrub clean the floorboards of this our home
Lest refuse from the lives we did not lead
Become, in some strange, frightening way, our own
And we have plans that will not tolerate our fears
A year laid out like rooms in a new house
The dusty wine glasses rinsed off
The vases filled, and bookshelves
Sagging with heavy winter books
Seeing the room always as it will be
We are content to dust and wait
We will return here from the dark and silent streets
Arms full of books and food
Anxious as we always are in winter
And looking for the Good Life we have made

I see myself then: tense, solemn
In high-heeled shoes that pinch
Not basking in the light of goals fulfilled
But looking back to now and seeing
A lazy, sunburned, sandaled girl
In a bare room, full of promise
And feeling envious

Now we plan, postponing
Pushing our lives forward into the future
As if, when the room contains us and all our treasured junk
We will have filled whatever gap it is that makes us wander
Discontented from ourselves
The room will not change:
A rug, or armchair, or new coat of paint
Won't make much difference;
Our eyes are fickle
But we remain the same beneath our suntans
Pale, frightened
Dreaming ourselves backward and forward in time
Dreaming our dreaming selves
I look forward and see myself look back