I thought I had posted this quite some time back. Apparently not. These are some observations while floating down the canals in Amsterdam, getting brief glimpses into the lives of people with their homes tied up to the banks, and them getting brief glimpses into mine.

Windows (or ‘Anchored’)
May 4, 2007
Amsterdam

We drift slowly past
a thousand lives
tied up to the river bank.
A peek in the window,
nothing more,
and then the boat moves on.

They sit at dinner
and argue about the bills.
She yells at him, then
looks out at me,
and I move on.

He sits before the bookcase,
books to the ceiling
All his friends there on the shelves
Dickens and Balzac and Tolstoy
to keep him company
on lonely nights.

She stares out the window
and the strangers in her front yard,
wishing she could go
where they have been
see what they have seen
longing to be far away
while I long only to be home.
She waves, timidly, sadly,
and we float past.

Here sits only a cat
always at home
for all places are alike to him.

A hundred faces from
and hundred windows
on their way to Nasau
and sun and sand.
Are they going to, or from?

A thousand lives
tied up to the river bank
and we,
we float past
wishing, perhaps, to be
anchored.