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Leaving Home

Early morning.
You leave home
for the very last time.

A samurai sleeps
in your parents’ bedroom.

You enter on tiptoes
take his thesis from the bedside
and tear it to pieces.

You find the street
crowded with people
celebrating a wedding
maybe your own.

Farther on in a rural area
night has fallen.

A river stretches on and on
glimmering in the darkness.

Your boat awaits you.

•

Victor Contoski is an American writer and university professor of Polish descent.  His books of original poetry are Astronomers, Madonnas, and Prophesies (Northeast/Juniper Books, 1972); Broken Treaties (New Rivers Press, 1973); Names (New Rivers Press, 1973); A Kansas Sequence (Tellus / Cottonwood Review Press, 1983); Midwestern Buildings: A Collection of Poems (Cottonwood Press, 1997); and Homecoming (New Rivers Press, 2000). He has also edited and translated Polish-related writings.

Photo ©Joanne Warfield

Back to Poetry Anthology
Date

July 12, 2016

Category

Poetry