Megan Duffy

Rooted

You have come home
again.
Again is the word
to be leaned
on here.
This house was
never home until
you left it again
and again.
     And again,
you are relegated to
the attic room
with its dormers
and little, west-facing
window that
sits atop the house
like a Cyclopean
peeper.
     And, here you are,
34, sleeping in the room
that runs the length
above your parents’ bed,
watching the summer evening
run like India ink across
the sky.
Clouds, ash-blue, edged
in blisters of copper:
oblong opals
above the
blackness of
exhausted August trees.
     And you think,
this is a primal beauty.
You think,
these oaks have been
swaying endlessly always.
You think,
this sky is rootless and
mutable and
unwilling to be framed.

Author Bio

Megan Duffy’s work appeared in The Furnace Review’s Spring 2005 issue. She has also been published in Release and Notes on the City. She received a BA in English from Eugene Lang College and an MA in English Literature from Rutgers University.