Poetry Moves

poetry has moved me

in with friends and lovers

then back with my parents

from Corning to Fredonia

from a student dorm to a trailer

to an apartment half underground

back to a dorm

it once packed me off 

to Rochester then to Buffalo 

with a woman and her child

from a mall bookstore gig 

to café work then a bookshop 

on the Elmwood strip

it moved me in hospitals 

for the births of my children

through divorce and marriage

a custody battle

too many deaths

poetry keeps moving me

around Long Island

by Babylon and Whitman’s home

and Melville’s namesake

Deer Park and Lindenhurst 

it still moves me

moves in me through me

moves me