Foster children move from place to place

Foster children move from place to place
With memories that walk the night alone,
Nor is the love theirs that they must embrace.

Yet most survive with a peculiar grace,
Even though their hearts should turn to stone
As they move about from place to place.

Perhaps within themselves they find a space
To furnish as they would a mobile home,
Finding scraps of things they can embrace,

A memory like some much-fingered lace,
Thoughts and dreams that only they have known,
Moving as they do from place to place,

Their childhood impossible to trace
In the years of yearning after they are grown,
Filled with love they've chosen to embrace,

Yet with their losses etched upon their face,
Pain for which no penance can atone.
How can they move and move from place to place,
Surrendering the love they must embrace?

---Nicholas Gordon