I Never Want To Go When It’s Time

I Never Want To Go When It’s Time

Kate Light

I never want to go when it’s time

to go; I want to hang back, to read

a book, or make another line rhyme.

I always think that what I really need

is there in the place that I am leaving,

not waiting in the new place I ached

to go to. I go, but with a kind of grieving,

saying, Why’d I ever wish to shake

things up, when things were really fine?

To be with him I always had to yank

my roots, I always had to pull my bones

by heartstrings, to tear my spine

from land to land; sometimes I walked a plank

to reach that world, and breathe, and write these poems.