Poems of Place & Displacement

Everyone Is Gone

My neighbor has lost himself
he looks for himself
day and night
he is lost
the man who lives across the street
he comes out his front door
and stands arms
outstretched
moaning his name
calling himself
pleading with me to find him
to look
up and down the block
for a boy at dusk
on a bike
or a child skipping
home from school
he says
I am lost and my
mother has gone into
the wind
leaving great green splashes
of morning on the
purple sky
and she has lost me
left me
left me here
on this small lawn
with the dawn heaving
toward me
a boy in a big old body
open and gaping
my soul sees a glimpse
of her back melt
green and warm and
dimly she holds nothing for me
but this one moment on
the grass
on a bright fall morning
with trees
grinning
and a black squirrel
watching me
grope toward
my
self

 






Photo Credit: US National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration



Copyright 2007,  Suzanne Scarfone

Suzanne Scarfone's poems have appeared in Ducts, Phoebe: A Journal of Feminist Scholarship, Cider Press Review, Earth's Daughters, and Natural Bridge: A Journal of Contemporary Literature. She is writer-in-residence  in Detroit with InsideOut Literary Arts Project and with VSA arts, an international organization which showcases the accomplishments of artists with disabilities. She has produced two music and poetry compact discs, The Poetry Harmonium and Arts at an Exhibition, in collaboration with composer Christian Kreipke, and poets Carol Carpenter and Anca Vlasopolos.



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