Names for Home

A light in daytime is a lonely thing. ~ John Steinbeck

You allow yourself one look back,
as if, like Lot’s wife, you believed
you might gather once-in-a-lifetime
moments you lived there, gather them 
up in your arms like a bouquet you 
could carry away or place in a vase 
on a window ablaze in yellow and blue.  
Just last week, that was still true of your life.

But there is no room for bouquets
or last week in the frayed backpack 
and bag you take to live in a subway 
with your child.  Beneath the reach 
of bombs falling, sirens replace every 
name you’ve ever known for home.

RICHARD LEVINE

Richard Levine, a retired NYC teacher, is the author of Selected Poems, Contiguous States, and five chapbooks. Now in Contest is forthcoming from Fernwood Press. An Advisory Editor of BigCityLit.com, he received the 2021 Connecticut Poetry Society Award, and co-edited Invasion of Ukraine 2022: Poems. Website: richardlevine107.com.