Paris, here. I have
been lost since, wandering
in a bombed-out American
city among strangers
who meant me no harm.
Moving from the bars
to the streets, and coming
home alone to talk
to no one or myself
until the first light
broke the sky and I could
sleep a moment and waken
in the world we made
and will never call
ours, to waken to
the smell of bourbon
and sweat and another day
with no bridge, no old city
cupped carefully in
a bowl of mountains,
no one to take this hand,
the five perfect fingers
of the soul, and hold it
as one holds a blue egg
found in tall grasses
and smile and say something
that means nothing, that
means you are, you
are, and you are home.
from Philip Levine’s 7 years from somewhere