Floating

"The home of the sun is the clouds." -Elijah, age 4 1/2

The ocean refuses no river. -from Dances for Universal Peace

I've been talking about leaving town.
Talking about it and thinking about it,
but I didn't feel it until today,
in a familiar kitchen with friends

when I saw the hole where I used to be,
already mended like an old sock is darned
with lumpier yarn,
not wholly comfortable at first but
serviceable enough and soon unnoticed.

I remembered Andy Goldsworthy's wee round driftwood house,
felt how she was lifted from the beach
when the sea and the river came together.
The water neither kind or unkind, but implacable, irresistable.
And she, buoyed up, creaking slightly,
neither happy nor unhappy,

gently carried away, bits of her beached or
floating free, to make a new shape on a new shore.
She knew about floating.
It was how she got there in the first place,
piece by piece.