Empty Nest Poem by John Tansey

With the boy’s room, draped in white sheets
This whole year, like a cocoon, preserved, in amber,

She closes another album: The fossil record of their marriage,
Steeped, in the earthen layers of clay.

Then, turning to face him, two huge land masses:
He, the old world, she is of the new,

And with thirty years of continental drift
Having poured an ocean between them,

They live, now, in different time zones,
Sleep, eat and speak in different tongues…