HESTIA

arrives with ashes to corner the past.
By the hearth a family waits,
cradle song upheld—another's attendant breath,
the rising, falling mystery.
There the ancients dwell on firelight,
their eyes lacquered with ease.

In dream such repose appears
to count.
At night when the moon is out
and the covers up, we feel at home
like birds in abandoned cathedrals.

Then we wake,
pace, and grow restless
waiting, and, as of old, want to leave
for the next, best-imagined place.

It's in our blood. It's pointed to
as over the mountains, under the sky:
the way out,
each threshold filled with dark enough
to make the eyes grow wide
and stare.

First published in Northeast