Here in this house, among photographs

of your ancestors, their hymnbooks and old

shoes…I move from room to room,

a little dazed, like the fly. I watch it

bump against each window.

I am clumsy here, thrusting

slabs of maple into the stove.

Out of my body for a while,

weightless in space…

Sometimes the wind against the clapboard

sounds like a car driving up to the house.

My people are not here, my mother

and father.  I talk

to the cats about weather.

“Blessed be the tie that binds…”

we sing in the church down the road.

And how does it go from there? The tie…

the tether, the hose carrying 

oxygen to the astronaut,

turning, turning outside the hatch,

taking a look around.