POEM: Tonight, My Heart Is North

Tonight, My Heart Is North

1.

Swallows, bat-like,
swoop over the sycamore.
A low breeze raises blades
of grass beside our blanket.

The sounds of South Sudan
mingle with the clinks
of leashes and collars
and the sneakered footfalls of walkers.

The cat chases imaginary prey
up the trunk of the tree,
squirrels passing unnoticed
mere feet away.

2.

A break with routine:
I’ll forego a shower
so as not to miss
the sound of the rain.

I waited till the small hours
to close the bedroom window —
preferring a damp carpet
to the loss of the waterfall.

Since I was a kid
I’ve loved the car wash,
the sense of enclosure,
of safety in the flood.

This pre-dawn morning,
my bed is my transport —
from its shelter
I adore this world of water.

3.

It’s been raining for days —
today, warnings of a tornado,
but none appeared.

“If one comes I’ll run out,
let it take me,” I said.
“Over my dead body,”
they said, “I’ll knock you out.”

Tonight, my heart is north:
on the shores of the Memphramagog,
where a skunk slithers
around my legs;

on the beach at Provincetown,
kneeling in the sand
to photograph the wooden Buddha
I’d carried in my backpack;

after a movie on North Street in Pittsfield,
stopping to capture the sun
as it sinks between the buildings.

Part of me is always there —
walking the rocky beaches or
breathing in the Berkshires air or
looking over the waist-high wall at Quebec or
pulling a smooth stone from the edge of the Housatonic.

That ground — the land of my birth —
captured me a half-century ago.
It has never let me go.
I never want it to.

/ / /

September 2024
Charlottesville VA