Poem: The Houses I’ll Never Enter

A poem about revisiting my old neighbourhood after more than 30 years

These aren’t houses I have been in,
The homes from my old neighbourhood:
me walking by. Sure, some of them

even look the same — just as I might
to many, maybe even to some of the
people still behind the same windows.

But I’ve changed my skin so many times
since knees were scraped, falling off
bikes without brakes, and how skateboards

wobbled more than when anyone else
was riding them. Those houses too,
no longer a blur, they’ve changed

skins too; internal organs as well. New
people in new rooms that used to be old.
Old people still in there with the new.

But I recognise the trees, still moving
with the breeze, forever channelling
centuries, standing to outlast us all.