Albatross
Driving toward
the town of my childhood
the closer I get the more
I dissolve, salt
in time’s water.
Even memories
not born there
live there now. Everything
ends up magnetized
to that place – the Cathedral
of St. Basil, rebuilt
on County Street.
The shaggy hides
of mountains push
against factories.
Does it matter
that everything I’m living
is memory
that nothing happens
anymore
for the first time?
The stuffed albatross
in a glass case.
In the children’s museum
I keep circling
back there. The carefully
painted backdrop: beige swath
with brown stippling for sand
olive checkmarks
for beach grass.
And my reflection
a ghost that holds
a yellow-eyed bird
in its watery outline.
