Home

Is it the place you left behind

or the place where you are going,

Is it the place you chose

or just where you happened to land,

Do you see it with your eyes open

or only ever with your eyes closed?

How far back do you have go

or how far forward,

To get to

the place in your

mind

where you feel well?

Can

you

get

there

from
here?

Does your home have a name

an address with a yard

signs to point the way,

Or, is it a path

The road itself the only constant

That keeps you moving on …

@2016 Donna Jo Wallace

Interview

Eight-twenty in the morning

and I have escaped my orbit for a day.

The highway has already spun me out

in some new direction,

another trail of false hope,

probably.

We’ll do the dance:

Handshake on One, Smile on Two,

Do the Positive Spin.

It’s the first date of the business world,

always awkward,

full of fear, and yearning.

Maybe all this

real-world play-acting

is just a dream, and

tomorrow I’ll wake to find that

the only thing I’ve really done today

is to write this poem.

©2004 Donna Jo Wallace

Star Stuff

We did not ask
to be catapulted among the stars
never knowing where the universe may take us,
how far, or why

we have been left like debris
along the trail of stars
no map, no instructions
only questions, and desire.

Still, this hostile place gave birth
to the paths we walk

and showed us what a home is.

This is the long game of long games,
the universe itself,
creating, destroying, inventing, rearranging
into a future not envisioned

it is wrong, somehow, that what had burned so bright

leaves a hole, a hole in the universe
a presence known only by its absence

It is an accident of life, isn’t it,

that any of us should even be here,

to be alive at the same moment

in all of everything.

We cling to our certainty that we are here now,

but we are each, after all, only a flicker, a whisper.

The questions that arise from the void create possibility.

It is only in certainty that we are truly lost.

©2014 Donna Jo Wallace.

Almost Hope

Cardboard towers gather around me

like stone giants of old, and I seek their wisdom.

Perhaps if I learn life’s lessons well enough

I might yet be rewarded with the right to stop in one place.

The voice of the box tape, raw and demanding,

punctuates my comings and goings,

All evidence of life’s messy work,

contained and taped and moved on again.

I seek the Zen of reaching and not grasping

Knowing and not knowing

Having and not having.

The disappointment

I feel is almost

like hope

These boxes are just little Christmas presents to myself --

Time capsules to be opened

in another reality.

Far away from here.

My exhaustion keeps me company,

and I feel consumed and happy

in a frenzy of activity

which seems like progress.

I will it to replace this hole inside of me,

as I close this box and that,

erasing each one from my memory,

relinquishing it to the future.

©2006 Donna Jo Wallace.