J.R. Solonche

Over There

Although we know they may
not be better necessarily
over there, we know at least
things are different, and we

sense we would be different
ourselves all these years
had we been born, brought
up, nurtured over there,

been given opportunities
to play the barefoot games,
had we had the friends
with the perfect trochee names

who lived on streets with
no sharp corners but with trees
that grew, merged over roads,
melded light like arches,

in houses shadowed with
pianos and portraits in oil,
who went to the alabaster
school on the low, smooth hill

with a library on whose
shelves are only first editions
bound in leather and halls
echoing a bronze tradition

like a language stranger
than ours, older and stronger,
the language of flawless children
into which ours fades forever.

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J.R. Solonche is the author of 38 books of poetry and coauthor of another. Nominated for the National Book Award, the Eric Hoffer Book Award, and three times for the Pulitzer Prize, he lives in the Hudson Valley.