Advice
by Ted Kooser

We go out of our way to get home,
getting lost in a rack of old clothing,
fainting in stairwells,
our pulses fluttering like moths.
We will always be
leaving our loves like old stoves
in abandoned apartments. Early in life
there are signals of how it will be—
we throw up the window one spring
and the window weights break from their ropes
and fall deep in the wall.

"Advice" from Flying at Night: Poems 1965-1985 by Ted Kooser