I
If Home is where the heart is,
I’m still househunting.
When the place you’ve lived your whole live
Loses its luster,
Home is a difficult term.
Home is everywhere I long to go
But haven’t been to yet.
Home is anywhere but where I am.
Home is a place
That still has something to offer me.
Home is where I’m not.

II
Home for me is
A small white bookshelf,
Ageworn and careworn,
Standing in my room,
Hunched over from the odds and ends
Collected on top of it
From years of gifts
And spare change
And careless storage,
And the books in that shelf,
Which I have read
A hundred times each
And the paperback pages
Are slowly coming apart
As I read through
The dog-eared pages
One more time
To capture the feeling
Of wonder and joy
That lingers
In the finger-smudged ink
And the smell of a book
That loves to be loved.








III
I have given away my heart many times.
I give away my heart in every conversation with acquaintances and long-time friends.
I give away my heart every time I pick up my pen.
My heart has always been open and visible and free to all who would take it.
Part of the challenge is finding people who are willing to take my heart when I give it

away and who will care for it and cherish it.
The bigger challenge is finding people who will trust me with their heart in return.
All I want is a fair trade heart.



IV
A highway isn’t just a highway
At night.
At night, a highway is the infinite emptiness
Of space.
Space, where all motion you could possibly feel
Is relative.
Relative too where you’re going and where
You’ve been.
Where you’ve been is no longer a
Real place.
Real places can be seen, can be
Returned to.
To return would be impossible, there is
Only forward.
Forward, into the night, and you have
No destination.
Destinations are fixed points, and you have no point of reference
In space.















V
When you look across the highway median
At other cars passing by,
Going the other direction,
You realize
There’s not much between
You and them.
Only a patch of grass.
Sometimes small.
Sometimes big.
But only ever grass
And a turn of the wheel
Separates northbound traffic
From southbound traffic.
But the rules of the road
Keep the two
Utterly distinct.