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.
YOU ARE READING
Home and House
PoetryI was inspired to write this poem after reading Gaston Bachelard's "Poetics of Space". The poem about the exploration of space not only as a material entity but as memory. Even though something may no longer exist, we can visit it and live through...