I grow up and leave home.
Fall in all kinds of love, none the wiser.
Now itís time, as they say, to move forward.
I gather all the loose change in the house,
find I have amassed a small fortune.
At the bank, waiting to speak with a teller,
I read a pamphlet that informs me
how much larger my small fortune
could have been by now if only.
I decide, instead, to go to France.
I take a little room on the rue de Seine,
get lost at Versailles, fail to befriend
the handsome waiter at the CafÈ crËme.
When I get back itís late fall, the pool
in the park is locked up, clogged with leaves.
Squirrels, hard-wired for the future,
are burying nuts in the threadbare lawn.
Wind comes down the mountain with a rose in its teeth.
There are gaps in the sky the sky fills in with sky.