Moving Day

The refrigerator is empty and clean.

The smudged traces of our time here

are gone from doorjambs and cupboards,

like the vanished tracks of winter pilgrims

when spring returns.

An echo mocks my final steps through the place.

The loaded truck outside leans toward

the road, eyes burning, head down.

But the work is not quite done.

In the high corners there lingers an

accumulation of things that are mine—

shuddering cobwebs I dare not disown:

every ashen word that began as a fiery ember,
half-formed dreams waiting for my return,
poems that ran away from my grasping demands
in search of a new world,
thin-lipped moods and brooding silences others
had to bear away,
and milky flecks of small-minded fear.

With a broom and a basket I gather them all

in the hope that I may yet fit these jagged pieces

into the improvised puzzle of myself
and one day live in a house 

with fewer cobwebs

in the high corners.