In and Out of Place

Another new year, they tell me. Trees laden with drippings, Pollock oaks. I venture onto the carpeted lawn with only a number two pencil. My neighbor with great legs beckons from her porch—she has a place of heat but no light. She wants me to invest that place with significance. Nights I hear her mewing.

Someday, and it can’t come too soon, I will pack up my cassettes and head to the unknown palaces of sin, where flows the river of need. I have the children’s wishes to guide me; I only have to reinvent myself along their lies.

Photo credit: Norio Nomura