Places We Love

In researching my next book on how the Environmental Crisis is a Crisis of our Heart I came across the following poem that speaks to power of place 

Places We Love 

By Ivan V. Lalic  

Places we love exist only through us, 

Space destroyed is only illusion in the constancy of time, 

Places we love we can never leave, 

Places we love together, together, together, 

And is this room really a room, or an embrace, 

And what is beneath the window: a street or years? 

And the window is only the imprint left by 

The first rain we understood, returning endlessly, 

And this wall does not define the room, but perhaps the night 

Your son began to move in your sleeping blood, 

A son like a butterfly of flame in your hall of mirrors, 

The night you were frightened by your own light, 

And this door leads into any afternoon 

Which outlives it, forever peopled 

With your casual movements, as you stepped, 

Like fire into copper, into my only memory; 

When you go, space closes over like water behind you, 

Do not look back: there is nothing outside you, 

Space is only time visible in a different way, 

Places we love we can never leave.