Changing

Once I was afraid of leaving 
the place where I spent nearly all 

my life, within long-cultivated networks
of friendship and work; doctors, neighbors,

familiar haunts, the place where my kin
are buried in the shadow of the hills. 

Then I moved away, and built up a life
all over again. That fear is still there, 

but now I want to live just outside a large 
city where the population is more sparse, 

where I can hear the occasional rooster 
cry at dawn and see stars compete with fire-

flies at dusk. I wonder how many lives 
are left for one restlessness to move 

into another, until change after change 
becomes indistinguishable from stillness.