setting up camp

[Isis]

setting up camp

We invaded. We sent not armies,
felt no avalanche of headlines, no official sagging sheafs.
Instead we picked up our homes, looked underneath
couch cushions, porches, the car that died in the garage;
packed what we could with trepidation
and lots of tape.
Sister wore four layers to make room for books
despite the heat, and we lashed on the bells and
letters of a past life, soup pots banging against keys
in hope to return, someday, from war.
The summer swelled and broke before us,
making way, and in its ebb we molted possesions
like the leaves onto a crackeling ground.
Winter. We dug in our heels, waited,
lost most of our keys, remembered
how well we boarded up.
---------------------------- Now what
can they do against our rising tide?
They must watch as immensity arranges itself
among homeland stone walls, becoming woods,
to stretch clawlike, stickly, foreign;
tap gently each autumn against the comfortable.
They must choose:
invade elsewhere, get lost in snow and space,
or come under our wretched, familiar arches.