My World is Too Small

My world is too small.


There are cars everywhere filling the streets,
so many that I cannot find a place to walk.
There are builidings around me where I work,
some newly refurbished and some too old,
tall, gray, imposing giants covering my world in shadow.
I cannot see the mountains.


My world is small.


My neighborhood is crowded with the same strangers,
going somewhere, seeing someone, learning something,
passing me by, lives forever moving in a changing world.
My yard too, moves with leaves from the dying autumn wind,
and litter from the inconsiderate neighbors next door.
The music is too loud from across the street.
I wish for new neighbors.


The world.


I wake up to the sound of a distant lawn mower,
on a Sunday morning.
I dressed up in yesterday's clothes and head to church,
listening half-heartedly to a sermon of helping others
by an aging priest who's seen better days.
My soul content, my stomach starts to complain.
I go to a restaurant.



The world is big.


They are sitting there across from me in a booth laughing,
eating a meal together underneath a shadowy ceiling fan.
They talk and act in a way that makes me remember,
back to the times when I still had a family to close my arms around.
Of times with friends who used to laugh,
and of family who used too talk a little too much.
I push in the chair and the half eaten pizza away and leave.



The world is too big.


Everyone I know back in my past has moved,
to a different neighborhood of a different life.
Everyone gone from the schools we've grown up in,
and the houses we've visited as friends.
memories still lingering in my heart,
burdened by the present reality,
yearning to live in the past.



The world is too big.


My world is too small.