Planning Ahead

I left home by myself.
I went to that fantastical place of sand and waves,
wild pheasants, wheat-colored scorpions, black vultures.
And I finally felt it:
the sun handing out heat,
the ground and my skin both radiating heat.
A self-sustaining circus of sweat and heat.

Then I came home,
back to the damp cold,
back to the layers keeping my skin from the outside world.
Back home in my cold familiar complaining.
But here the weather is mine.
The wolf spiders and porcelain gray moths, mine.
The blue shadows of early dusk, mine.
The soft dancing Douglas Firs,
the fields of grass and mud and goose shit,
the indirect questions and opinions,
all mine.
Every neighborhood a living museum of my life.

What will it feel like to give it up and trade it in?
To call some other place home?

We know this already:
I will follow no man around the world
like an agreeable housewife who says "I'll pick it up" and "don't worry,"
who learns the helpful tricks of generations of women
who had to live their lives for men. No way.
And still I might leave this home
of Douglass Firs and goose shit and memories
with a man. for a man. because of a man.
I say strong and low, "It will be different."
I don't know what it will be like.
It won't be mine.
Maybe I can make it mine.
Maybe it will be warm.