Comings and Goings
In Tucson
when a university student
goes home
she might leave her desk
and a chair, a bookcase outside her cave
with a sign, “Take me.”
And who could resist
heat radiating over furniture
like a mirage? You hoist
an old Victrola into your pickup
and ratchet up a new song.
You start that life in the West,
invent a past, and when that tune
winds down, it’s okay to put out,
“Take me.”
What do we have in life
but comings and goings?
when a university student
goes home
she might leave her desk
and a chair, a bookcase outside her cave
with a sign, “Take me.”
And who could resist
heat radiating over furniture
like a mirage? You hoist
an old Victrola into your pickup
and ratchet up a new song.
You start that life in the West,
invent a past, and when that tune
winds down, it’s okay to put out,
“Take me.”
What do we have in life
but comings and goings?
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Disclaimer
We do not accept unsolicited submissions. American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2014 by Glenna Luschei, “Comings and Goings,” from The Sky Is Shooting Blue Arrows, (Univ. of New Mexico Press, 2014). Poem reprinted by permission of Glenna Luschei and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2024 by The Poetry Foundation.