138. The Riches of the Ekkeko

Old Spice, cigarette smoke, and steam
make the scent of a father,
or used to, but the past moves only slowly out of place,
so much so that it remains there,
which means still here,
inside us, your children, six of us,
variously rendered, each a different attempt
at attention. Today we make

another attempt, everything
incarnate, halcyon, the last first
hope for something else
or different, in the same way

that the making of a child
is the making of a father,

which we remember as a mythical beast,
the slumber of Sundays, oak from an acorn,
verdant shade on a sun-soaked day, and

walking
walking
walking

with the idea there was always
a place to go, an
other place to be,

knot of a thought of a
brow of an eye of a
man walking a street

of some forgotten city

Cuzco Accra Speightstown Oruro
Windsor Porto Casablanca London
Paris Munich Rome Antofagasta
São Paulo Mogadishu Asuncion
Torrejon Pisa Strasbourg Millbrae

walking as evidence
of waking of watching
of wanting to be of

something but never
of somewhere

just through it

taking it in
thinking it out
holding as a memory
on a little folded card
of a thought the sense
that some place leaves
inside those of us
who never were
of someplace

the world is shutters
before lights in flickering shapes
the world is a shuddering
sense of the machine moving
all these tiny images
so quickly past
that we can hardly grasp

even a scent of them
before they are gone

and we are no longer
in the Panamanian rainforest
or Altiplano cold and dry
or in the deep rich heat
of the Yungas or together
on a grey ship crossing
the grey Atlantic for
Morocco or in the Rome
that was our common but
temporary home or lost
in the streets of Lima
or on Tobago waiting
to be discovered again

We are the six children
of a father, and we do not
come from this place, not
even the places we were born,

not even the places
where we live

We are moving somewhere
else as if we were just
married today and are
creating a new life

for in our world
every day is a new place

every place is
a new home

every home is
a place

to move away from