ROLLING AND RETURNING
Ivan Veitenheimer

I returned home from college
to a different house
and stayed in the guest room
without my childish things, airplane
models with crooked decals, my mitt
smooth and soft as my palate
that made my left hand reek
like a shoe still warm with sweat.
As I tried to sleep in the alien room
I worried how my dreams would lunge
and repeat, then I remembered
my marble roll made by my grandfather,
the smooth sound of rolling glass
on wood across the grooved bridges
like Roman Aqueducts over valleys
the cat-eyes rotating in their sockets
clicking when they backed up
where I traffice-jammed them
with my forefinger in the gutter
or where they clogged
at the turn-down
to the next inclined channel.
At the bottom marbles
clattered out on the wooden platform
rolling and rocking. I grabbed them
and dropped them in the hole at the top
to roll-descend again and again.
Probably sold at a yardsale
or donated to Goodwill along with the rest
of my childhood I left behind. I slept
but all night I fell turning over
and over soundlessly in space.

by Ivan Veitenheimer © 2005

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