Home and House

The home of my childhood has gone,

Though the house still stands.

And it is exactly the way I imagined

It would be after many, many years.

Weathered yet its integrity a lamp held up.

Whatever had been unpleasant was pleasant

Now, and I stand by its pillars,

Made sense of this coming back.

 

The curved roof that caught rain before

Letting it fall into the ground.

The rippled window that let light fall

Into a corner

 

Where my cat used to dream, and I,

To sulk, bored, and weeping for I had tears.

The cat, simple creature, dreamt only of

Things that moved, of walking in the dark.

 

From afar, the house was a familiar

Stranger, it bore a human face. Hesitant

Yet eager to embrace and be embraced.

I kept within me the swaying tall grass, tree leaves trembling,

 

Moved by a hand unknown.

Memories, real and imagined, stirred in the attic and

Cellar of my time. Mysterious and watchful, they ran past me as

I held the candle. They do not reveal themselves in fluorescent.

 

What is sensed in the warmth of recollection?

Pain of a hundred partings. Loved one whose whereabouts

Are unknown. Revelations we had rather kept in the closet or ceiling.

Comfort in solitude. The strangeness of that comfort,

A stark home: in truth, the space itself has been

Emptied. No photograph, no object spared.  

It was only by lingering that

I saw what was no longer there.