by John Schellhase
I remember going into a voting booth, the blue
truncated curtains rustling by my hair, my hand
on my father’s jeans, the shoes of the other voters
visible around us. When we left, the sky was dark –
the night falls early in November – and the clouds
were moving across the face of the moon, but
to me it looked as if the moon was moving
and the clouds still. I argued with my parents
that this was so. I was perhaps seven. This then
was one life, but I was born again. Many times
I opened my eyes and found the earth transformed
to Arkansas, to Greece. Once I rode a train to China
with two Mongolian brothers transporting cartons
upon cartons of lip balm. Once I was a Mongolian
riding a train on New Year’s Eve with an American boy.
I offered him a sample of my lip balm and he smiled.
The terminal is quiet before I board my flight.
Between dreams, I anoint the plastic window
with the oil of my forehead, and I, like the moon
am motionless as the clouds flow by.
I have walked through what I could call far off forests,
but for the trees that grow there,
they are not far off at all.
John Schellhase is an American writer based in Segovia, Spain. His writing has appeared in FOLIO, Dappled Things, Linebreak, and other publications.