Habit Forming

Habit Forming

How eager we are to make habit,
to take the new and transform it into the rote.
Where to turn and which awning to park beneath.
What number corresponds to your home
and the homes that your friends now live in.

Disquieting, disruptive,
our encounters with the unfamiliar ruffle us.
The consciousness rears up, wants to run
into some comfortable, imagined future.

What would we miss
if we could conjure habits from acts
we are yet unaccustomed to.

Miniature victories. The erasure of darkness
from a map. Scrutiny of time, and attentiveness
to where we are going. The strangeness
of the sky here,
how uncluttered and pale it is.
Variance in temperature,
the air warming slightly after snowfall.

Once we learn it well enough we will forget it.