Poem: Scenery Change

You have grown old looking out of windows,
at the light outside,
a small stage to see the world,
but only small slices,
both protection and jail,
built by others.

You can open them, true.
Raise up their their sash
and breath in the air,
Feel the breeze,
hear the sounds.

You can pretend
you are there.

Only of course,
you were not.

So at last you opened the window
and climbed through it,
left it behind, and walked
in the strange land you almost saw,
on and on, to new places,
to strange places.
Sometimes lost. Sometimes not.
Sometimes beautiful. or dangerous,
or simply different from what you imagined.

So different, that even when you come home,
and clamber back in the window
and lower the sash,
and look out,
the scenery has changed.

About this poem

Every time we go outside ourselves, every thing changes. Even what and how we see. I’ve lived this one.

The picture was taken from inside Mass MoCA, the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. It is housed in a former factory and when I go, I fall in love with the space as much or more as the art inside.

Tom