Moments of Being Away

Today I walked through the house
to touch things I once knew.
It wasn’t as a stranger I came
but more an uncertainty of where
I belonged. I mowed the backyard
as if hired to care for the property
and gave myself permission to pick
a panful of string beans. I found
a rabbit’s nest with four little
white cottontails, a pair of brown
thrashers searched under an oak tree,
my neighbor’s dog sniffed the hedge,
all as much at home as if they owned
the place. A few clouds dipped
past a sun which has slowed down
two-thousandths of a second in
one hundred years, a southwest wind
brought up moisture from the Gulf,
nothing out of the ordinary,
a usual summer day. Then two boys
asked to cross the backyard to fish
in Dry Run and a neighbor stopped
with a petition for me to sign and I
felt earth, mine, firm under my feet.