Moving Day

A HOUSE WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

"GOODBYE, BEAUTIFUL, EMPTY HOUSE . . .
WALLS WE PAINTED, SHELVES WE BUILT, FLOORS WE POLISHED . . . "
[By "we," I mean Gerry!]

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I am dedicating this blog post to my wonderful neighbors
Mia ~ Zoe ~ Bea
who are boxing up and packing and moving away this summer
Au revoir mes amies!

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Away went our little family,
like rats leaping off the burning ship.
It hurt to think about everything at once:
our friends, our desert, old home, new home.
We felt giddy and tragic
as we pulled up at a little gas-and-go market
on the outside edge of Tuscon.
Before we set off to seek our fortunes we had to gas up,
of course, and buy snacks for the road.

Barbara Kingsolver
from Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, p. 2

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A poem for every poem -- or in this case, four poems for one another -- all about the momentous occasion of Moving Day. The repeated images speak for themselves. In every poem you'll find the cardboard boxes, the eerie lonely no - person's land somewhere in between past and present and future, the strange light and odd sounds, the absent friends and closed doors, the keys, the landmarks, the old roads trailing behind, the new life stretching out ahead, the uncertainty of transition.

Each poet uniquely captures the sense of dislocation, isolation, and apprehension. Since first reading Joyce Barlow's poem in 1977, I have never failed to feel like "a great historical epic" whenever the occasion calls for such; and I was delighted, more recently, by the similarity of Barbara Kingsolver's sentiment: "We felt giddy and tragic." William Meissner unsettles the reader with his acquatic imagery and surprising motif of the pet goldfish / dead minnow; and Robert Wallace takes us back to a time before cell phones: "The phone has been disconnected."

Starting Out
Suddenly your life is packed away
in boxes and the present
is no longer home
again. You think
I must never leave
any of this. You feel
like a great historical epic,
capturing every moment around
you: the turning of keys, the entering
into rooms, your hand resting comfortably
on the light switch.

And then you are going,
the faces of your friends growing small
as they wave in the rearview mirror,
the sign at the city limits saying
COME BACK SOON

********

Then you are past stopping.
You would like to think you know
where you're going --
the map marked, the road clear.
But how will you know
when you get there?
the signs all blank
on this side, the roads narrowed
to a fine black line
behind you.

It may be you will never see any of this
again, coming suddenly bright
on the dark edges
of sleep. Or perhaps in the early
morning hours of some future room you will sit down
to write all this and find
it is the letter from home you've been waiting for.

Joyce Barlow, American Poet
poem from The Chariton Review, Fall 1977 (vol 3 no 2)


Moving Again
1.
You find yourself filing cardboard boxes for days.
When you open them you'll want everything
exactly as you packed it:
the flowers with petals unbroken, not smelling sour,
the slash of sunlight
caught in the corner
like a pet goldfish.

2.
Moving is a way of teaching yourself
where you've been, you think, while you watch
your wife stare at the soles
of her feet.
It's a way of learning
where you should not be,
like a fish that dreams too often
of breathing air.

3.
You step out the door for the last time,
expecting a hoard of neighbors, tears
hanging from their eyes, transparent laundry.
All that greets you is the empty
backyard, the hot sun
splashing you with salt.

4.
You walk to the truck with the key,
the key -- a dead minnow in your palm
that is suddenly heavier
than any packed suitcase, any davenport.

The engine starts in an instant.
As you drive away,
the exhaust leaves a blue stream behind you
where no fish are swimming.

William Meissner, American Poet
poem from The Chariton Review, Fall 1978 (vol 4 no 2)


Moving
Bookshelves empty, tables lampless, walls
bare, the house is a rubble of moving --
foothills of boxes, trunks
under clouds of ceiling.

My friends
said good-bye hours ago, when June twilight
hung on the hills. Now, in late dark
muggy for stars, moths whir at the yellow porch light,
ping screens. By the one dim floor lamp
among the shadowy undoings of my life,
in a limbo between having gone and having gone,
I sit like a caretaker of my doom.
Not an ashtray or a spoon.
In the real dawn, I will be going.

My friends are sleeping, turned toward
tomorrows without me -- will be sleeping
when I begin to drive the familiar streets and roads
in which the sun will come only after me.

If I called them now, in this hollow
past midnight, anything I said would
be from the future.

Alone in the present,
I wait, smoking (a tin can for ashes).
Bugs thwack on the screens. Beyond love
I am a projectile into the future --
still hours, days away.
Time has stopped at the speed I am going, landmarks
appear strangely in new light,
clouds whirling past me, into the past.

The phone has been disconnected.

Robert Wallace, American Poet
poem from the anthology
Some Haystacks Don't Even Have Any Needle, p. 170


And finally, the beautiful imagery and heart - breaking clarity of Howard Nemerov's poem was new for me in 2004 when my good friend Cate (mentioned many times before on this blog) sent me a copy to guide me on my westward journey. For many years we had lived across the street from each other in Philadelphia; then Cate returned to Ohio, and a year later, following in her footsteps, my family and I returned to Indiana. How aptly Nemerov describes the intensity of those neighborly days and years, and how honestly he portrays the conflicted decision to move away. Nowadays, Cate and I remain "neighbors" in the Midwest -- well, Ohio is right next door to Indiana! -- living proof that some friendships manage to survive the momentous, earth - shattering, giddy, tragic, time - traveling confusion of moving day.

Going Away
Now as the year turns toward its darkness
the car is packed, and time come to start
driving west. We have lived here
for many years and been more or less content;
now we are going away. That is how
things happen, and how into new places,
among other people, we shall carry
our lives with their peculiar memories
both happy and unhappy but either way
touched with a strange tonality
of what is gone but inalienable, the clear
and level light of a late afternoon
out on the terrace, looking to the mountains,
drinking with friends. Voices and laughter
lifted in still air, in a light
that seemed to paralyze time.
We have had kindness here, and some
unkindness; now we are going on.
Though we are young enough still
And militant enough to be resolved,
Keeping our faces to the front, there is
a moment, after saying all farewells,
when we taste the dry and bitter dust
of everything that we have said and done
for many years, and our mouths are dumb,
and the easy tears will not do. Soon
the north wind will shake the leaves,
the leaves will fall. It may be
never again that we shall see them,
the strangers who stand on the steps,
smiling and waving, before the screen doors
of their suddenly forbidden houses.

Howard Nemerov, American Poet
poem from
The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov, p. 220


SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS FOR MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Thursday, July 28, 2011

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