THREE BOWLS

i’m not hard-hearted: i know when it creeps
belly-to-the-ground, raising those
blurred, blind eyes
the past is only pleading to be stroked 


i hear its seagull mewings
but i ignore them. it protests 
faithfulness – tells me that what we had
no one has ever had (it tells everyone that)


they’ve all walked through it: left their stains, 
turned down its corners, torn out its pages -
it has that stickiness
the covers of library books have


but i am preparing my home
for the future. the future
is cautious and alone, but i think it will come to me


i have seen in its eyes the astonishment
with which it rediscovers itself. i have woken
to its first fall of snow, before anyone
has crossed the yard. it has that clarity
with which you perceive
someone you are about to fall in love with


there are always enough people wanting
to give the past a home,
walking it on a leash, showing it off


i own no past: i have no place to keep it, 
nothing to feed it on. the future, 
if it can be coaxed inside,
will be my companion. i know
what it needs – and i have prepared them:
three empty bowls 


one for what comes next,
one for what cannot be,
and one for all the emptiness we must eat 
to grow strong