On the Way Home
The flesh of these buildings
is gone: The white barn lost its horses,
its dingy house neighbor lost its slow boy.
New dwellings crisscross their yards,
dead to the past and its echo.
Years the child waved to Sam,
the horse in the barn's only window.
Both knew the language of cats, those ribbons
sprawled out in sunshine. Both knew how
memory fills the space where you live,
and the mind holds everything, always,
the boy and the horse beyond me.