My parents drove
Each Sunday
To look at houses
I walked with them
The good child
While my brother
Waited in the car

Walked through other
People's lives
Found the bedroom that
Would be mine
Peered at their trees outside
Left with their cooking
Smells in my hair lingering
As I slept in the room
I shared in our apartment

Each Sunday my parents
Drove to look at houses
Fragments of other lives
Clinging to my shoulders
Inhaled into my lungs
Houses large and lovely
Streets where oak trees reached
To meet each other

Until one Sunday
My parents drove
And stopped at acres of
Plowed overturned land
Separated by plywood sticks
Numbered close and
Anonymous as soldier's graves
We walked all of us through
The mud until my father stopped

And pointed at the stick in
Which we would live our future
In that cemetery of surrendered
Imagination I held close the collected
Flotsam of floating memories
Of all those other houses
Held close the keys to my
Eventual release from
Mediocrity of the stifled soul
Trapped within the pride of my parent's
Achievement