Place Lke Every

If you lived close by I would wake you
just to see the heart in your eyes
then leave you to drift again to lands
where imperfection is insignificant
since nothing is real.
If you could take me there
I would gladly follow.

But you don't live near, and
I cannot follow your mind to a land
without constraints.
It is written, "Each of us is a wilderness,
no matter how companion'd,”
so I suppose no matter which world
we chose it would be no different from
the ones we inhabit now.

Today, the world is a worn old shoe,
gray, scuffed, its sole embedded with crud.
It plods through minutes, hours
a homeless tramp trudging can to can.
The sky bears a grudge
against its own white glare.
There are no birds, no leaves, nothing green.

I wish to die in summer. I abhor
old gray shoes that circle and circle
going nowhere, the only sound their circling,
the only mark their mud.
Give me one more summer.
I'm tired of walking
and there's every place like home.

C Julianza Shavin 2008