Walking awhile at night
Each house got personal.
-Jon Anderson
Then impersonal again, in the old style of repetition.
All the houses with their minor domestic differences.
It seemed dishonest somehow to find comfort in them, those gestures: the manicured lawns with expensive sprinkler systems, the garbage bins
pulled to the curb for Tuesday pick up, the recycling.
Still, I admit, I did find comfort in them, & was troubled
by that. I’d go to coffee shops & talk like a philosopher
regarding death & sex. At home I’d hunch over poems
as though they were important, but then I’d sleep to the hum
of the television. Wasn’t it all…?
I wanted to live without distraction. I became
obsessed with the little deaths of daily routine. I was made
to speak grandly of the mundane things.
J.S. Belote earned his BA in English from Principia College and is an MFA candidate at Virginia Commonwealth University.