A funny thing happened on my way back home:
I found I had no place to go.
I occupy more time than space
but my time’s wound down, or nearly so.

I walk in time, through recollections
from which I haven’t had time to recover.
That Big Event That Changed My Life
is twenty years past, and one block over.

My mother, gone crazy, with an ice cream cone
seated on the steps of the Dairy Queen,
her wrecked face intent on that sweet and cold;
and I think, when I pass, that’s what I’ve seen.

As a kid, I ran a shoeshine stand
outside of the Capital Hotel.
I worked with a buddy who offed himself
later, when I didn’t know him well.

A morning train used to whistle in
to that terminal at the end of Main Street.
Its arrival would wake me. But there are no train now,
and nothing arriving, and no one to meet.

I’ve stayed in one place too long. I’ve got
all this time in a swelling circumference.
At every corner I turn to things
twenty years over and one block hence.

So I can’t go home. I’m always there:
These streets full of places long since gone
are my home town. My home is in time,
and time turns to distance as it winds down.