The James Hearst Digital Archive

Home » Poetry » Moments of Being Away

Moments of Being Away

Text of Poem

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.

First Line
Today I walked through the house
Original Pub Location
Original Publication Date
1983
Original Citation
Chariton Review 9.1 (April 1983) 16.
Complete Poems
443
Word Count
157
Poetic Form
open
Themes
Twitter Quote
Today I walked through the house / to touch things I once knew.