What we Want- or thought we wanted

Last week I posted a poem by Linda Pastan, a writer I do not know anything about, but whose poem about leaving home touched a tender spot in me. This weekend, another of her poems fell across my lap and I feel again that she has written somethng just for me.

What we Want

Linda Pastan

What we want

Is never simple.

We move among the things

we thought we wanted:

a face, a room, an open book

and these things bear our names-

now they want us.

But what we want appears

in dreams, wearing disguises.

We fall past,

holding out our arms

and in the morning

our arms ache.

We don't remember the dream,

but the dream remembers us.

It is there all day

as an animal is there,

under the table,

as the stars are there

even in full sun.