Moving

Even before the decision is made,
when hints of moving are heard,
before a house is found, or built,
everything changes.
The present becomes transparent.
Each movement raises ghosts:
hands a thousand times opening this door,
moving the plants on this window.
It becomes hard to replace the old screen,
or dust the mouldings.
Questions hang like cobwebs.
Where will I put all the books?
How discard my mother's knitting patterns?
I long for an attic to store
bits of memory I don't use
but love to come upon,
looking for something else.

"Leave everything and follow me."
At twenty-one, I left, with two blankets,
a bale of underwear, and a case of soap.
At forty, as death cleared my childhood home,
things returned to me:
my teddy bear rescued from a pile at the curb,
my sister's Morris-the-cat tee shirt,
a box of sepia ancestors,
and unfinished things:
a bolt of bubble-gum colored doubleknit,
a half-embroidered Santa pillow,
a one-legged crocheted poodle,
a kangaroo with no tail:
the interrupted lives of Cornell women.

Sometimes I dream of living
like Mother Teresa:
two saris, a washpail,
a pair of sandals, a mat.
Or like the people of Acoma:
one cottonwood tree,
two basins in the stone for rainwater,
a hundred miles of sky and sun.

M. Doretta Cornellis a Sister of the Divine Compassion and Associate Professor of English at Pace University, Pleasantville, NY. Her poems have appeared in The National Catholic Reporter, /Review For Religious/, Connecticut River Review, HazMat, and Red River Review.