Moving Day

Moving Day

The clouds are suitcases packed and scraping outside the door.

The old engine leashed outside is the neighborhood dog, ready

to run wild beneath the hunchback oaks pointing out of town.

The cardinals ring like unanswered telephones, while the father,

exploring the unfurnished highways of his home, lonely

like the wet-darkness before dawn, past the naked light-bulbs,

past the dent in the carpet where the couch used to sleep,

calls for the children already moved out and moving on.

Inside, there’s no shoe dirt or sweat and he knows there’s nothing

more covered in fresh paint than the memory of living together.

The walls are frames. The doors are albums, swinging on hinges.

Inside, the man struggles to lock up, while in the car outside

his wife unfogs her window with a fist to watch the soft rain

begin, the kind so slight, it lingers and unpacks itself for years.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I've been in the process of moving lately and while doing so, I was also reading a book called "The Book Thief" that had incredible use of imagery. Because of that, the first line of this poem, more or less, popped into my head and stayed there long enough to inspire a poem once things had calmed down. This poem is in the style of a modern sonnet, as in it is 14 unrhyming lines and it has a shift in tone in the last 6 lines, as per the Petrarchan sonnet. Sometimes I post poems right when I write them, whereas some, like this one, I hang on to and revise a couple times before posting. I hope you enjoy!