Unsettled
There’s a cat, or a ghost, in this bed with me.
Tonight I’m in bed trying to settle with myself
where I live versus where I am,
overlooking The Great Marsh
that borders the Merrimac River
before it greets the Atlantic Ocean.
I want to fall asleep here in my comfortable bed,
in this comfortable place where I live –
except when I’m not here,
but at my friend’s house –
and here’s the problem.
I live in two places, keeping me at least
two steps from being homeless, hopefully
two steps from living with my ghosts.
I have two cats. I don’t, to my knowledge,
have two ghosts. Not here anyway.
Not here where I have no history.
Not here where I have no mystery.
Where is home? Where my pets are?
Where my cat can jump on my bed?
Where my driver’s license says I live?
Or is home where my ghosts live?
This is not as bad as the nights
I try to determine where I am now
on my journey as an abject failure in life,
or the nights I try to feel more organized
by listing all the mistakes I made
in raising my children.
This is not as bad as the nights
I go over my finances,
one more time, to make sure I’ll be
solvent in the morning.
It’s definitely not as bad as
when the ghosts take over,
when they decide which thoughts
will rise to pounding, pounding.
Tonight it’s Buddy, my fifteen-pound tom cat,
the colors of a Creamsicle,
is walking across my feet
to settle in for our night’s rest.
Tonight’s questions can remain unsettled
without being so unsettling.
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Ellie O’Leary is a New England writer whose opportunities have included organizing a writing program at an Adirondacks retreat center, teaching at the Belfast (Maine) Senior College, curating the Freedom (Maine) Summer Reading Series and earning an MFA in Maine’s Stonecoast program. She is on the Amesbury (Massachusetts) Cultural Council and is Poet Laureate Emerita there. Her books are Breathe Here (2020, poetry) and Up Home Again (2023, memoir), both with North Country Press.
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Stone Poetry Quarterly 