Yesterday, I shopped for clothes,
slipping out of one suit
into another.
Like a caterpillar
or a snake
even locusts know this trick.

This morning, I went through files,
ranks of notebooks and ledgers,
at attention.
Inspection!
Until,
paper weight shed,
accumulated digital dust of 14 years deleted,
I emerge lean and clean,
refreshed.


Meanwhile:

forks and spoons nestle in the silverware drawer

glasses wait in ranks

the fridge is bare of lists

the calendar is off the wall

the march of dates now reduced to a simple single point.



a contract spells out how each item will be wrapped;
Packing paper,
Bubble wrap,
Shipping blankets, for the South Atlantic winter chill,
Cardboard armoires for clothing on hangers
Wooden crates built around framed pictures
Boxes for miscellany


A life measured in cubic feet.
Listed by room.
Valued for insurance
and import duties,
(different amounts of course).


And yet, on my list for the day, there are flowers for the new vase that found its way into the shopping cart.
Tonight, in the lowering light of evening,
as your perfume fills the room,
our eyes meet through the curl of smoke from your cigarette
and I know
in the midst of endings and leavings and horizons emerging,
I have never been so at home as in this moment now.