Poem: July 3, 2019

Voyeur

Not everyone shuts their curtains at night,
and in the right moments, if you are passing by,
you can see new possibilities, other ways you
might have lived your life, some different style
of furniture you might have chosen, some pet
or fixture you might never have considered.

Each lighted window is a display case of life's
artifacts: the fur coat, the unicycle, the rag doll
and walking stick, each an exotic alternative.
Passing through a neighborhood is a visit to
a strange museum of otherness, a series
of human aquariums filled with flickering
flat-screens tuned to channels you never watch.

Dioramas of domestic lives, family dinners
on strange dishes, the drama of a different
everyday- some pixie-cut girl in blue jeans
shouting up the stairs, hands on her hips;
three little children in pajamas, jumping
from couch to easy chair; a young couple,
painting their kitchen; a man in a jersey,
backlit in a doorframe, leaning on a crutch.

Nothing is much to hold onto. The starts
of a story, something to wonder about and
maybe look up, enough to make you want to
stop and stare, imagining what it's like to
smell their food, to put your feet up on the sofa,
to hold her hand in yours, or to know where
that door leads. But, of course, you don't stop.
We are only given one life. To linger there
would be to take what isn't yours.