the world a letter

Landscape

Past the landscape is how I would start
to reassemble my family
in that landscape is time
in that home
is where we move
my body was me and now
my body is my near landscape
my home
was an extension of my senses
see
here is the kitchen barstool
I’d eat my Cheerios in
feel from out my hand for its steel body
here is the coo of pigeons
under my eaves half waking me
half-way into morning
listening out my ear
for their bellies’ repeating
my father and my mother wander
bedroom to den
to basement, finding always
only me to argue with.

That house is grown
into me now, is ghostly.
“Our body is a house,”
the ancient meditationist says,
“we sit to allow our souls
to guard our house in great safety.”
Great safety means in step with time,
and then no time;
great safety means looking for nothing
that is not here
but what is not here?
I listen and listen, and my home
is yet my senses, my family
what is left
me.