Many Homes

The house I’m in now
sitting in the livingroom
halfwatching Doctor Strange
while Noah’s upstairs online with a friend
and Blair’s on the couch
looking at cars on his phone.

The house I grew up in, from 7 to 18,
the house my parents lived in
that my father doesn’t want to leave
that our friends all came to for Rosh Hashonah
or Thanksgiving or Seder Night
when we didn’t go to them,
that we came back to in snowstorms or
from vacation,
the house my mother wanted to die in
but didn’t.

On TV Doctor Strange has been kickstarted into life
and an ad for Matrix Resurrections.
We switch to Doctor Who. What is time travel but

the road I drive on between home and home
the route across the mountains,
Hadley fields, tobacco barns,
days of asparagus or corn, the moon in the sky

where the Nipmuck live and the Narragansett,
white-tailed deer, crows, wild turkey, cardinals and nuthatches,
the hawk we saw crashing through the ice in Easthampton

chasing prey and rising up again
as all the icefishers looked on, stunned,
yesterday.

Home is the book I’m reading, the puzzle I’m finishing,
the cat asleep at my side,
the pen in my hand, the notebook on my lap, the music
in my head.

Larger on the inside.