On the Way Home

The flesh of these buildings

is gone: The white barn lost its horses,

its dingy house neighbor lost its slow boy.

New dwellings crisscross their yards,

dead to the past and its echo.

Years the child waved to Sam,

the horse in the barn's only window.

Both knew the language of cats, those ribbons

sprawled out in sunshine. Both knew how

memory fills the space where you live,

and the mind holds everything, always,

the boy and the horse beyond me.