The Places we Carry

I was always leaving somewhere.
Boxes and bags.
Miles of lonely
highway stretches.
Towns blurred
in the rearview mirror.
Houses with boxes stacked by the door.
U-Hauls in the driveway.
Cardboard kingdoms
held together by tape.
Another goodbye
waiting in the hallway.

I didn’t realize
they were kingdoms.
My sanctuary.
I thought a kid just moved.
A new street.
A new school.
A new backyard.
New friends waiting
somewhere down the block.

Summers at Dad’s ranch
were different.
Chasing calves
through the pasture.
Fishing creeks
that cut through the land.
Watching bobbers disappear
beneath the surface.
Fighting bluegill
safely to shore.
Sunsets like majestic kings
fading slowly
over fields
that looked like they belonged
to someone
who knew how to stay.
Rocked to sleep
by the expansion
of the star-lit farm sky.
Cicadas and crickets
my lullaby.

As I dreamed
my childhood dreams,
I didn’t know then
how temporary
everything was.
I thought summer
would never end.
I thought rivers
remembered names.
I thought a place knew you,
like it knew the rocks,
the hills,
the pastures.
Then came more boxes.
More roads.
More weary travel.
Bedrooms that never became mine.
The old neighborhood disappeared
one street at a time.
The houses stayed,
but the people inside them
became strangers.
The kid with scraped knees
and growing pains
grew up.

Started chasing
other things.
His vagabond heart
grew feral.

Neon lights.
Dilapidated rooms.
Bottles lined up
like they had all the answers.
Taverns that smelled
like stale smoke
and bad choices.
Places where nobody asked
where you came from
or where you were going.

I carried those places too.
The bridges.
The hospitals.
The mornings when the floor
was the closest thing
to a bed.

Funny thing is,
after all those years
of running,
all I want now
is my maple desk.
My cats.
Coffee.
A road I know
without checking the signs.
A window looking out
at freshly mown grass
and the little elm tree.

New pictures
on the walls.
New books
on the shelves.
Tom Sawyer
is probably still waiting
in a box somewhere
down in the basement.

Maybe that’s the trick.
Maybe we spend our whole lives
trying to find the next place,
when what we’re really doing
is searching for the first one
we lost.

The ranch.
The creek.
The boy standing there
watching the sunset,
pretending he’s Don Quixote,
not knowing
he was already home.