Here are two poems about home. Where is home for you?

 

Moving Furniture

 

Satisfaction. The dark wood

warming beneath the rub of damp cotton,

 

the groan and creak of old bones

sliding across oak floors to an empty wall

 

warmed by sun sifting through snowfall –

 

drifting through pane upon pane of glass

the curtains half-pulled back to glance

 

at the courtyard’s crumbling face.

 

Is this why I feel belonging here?

and kinship?

 

Old furniture

touched by sun and snow –

 

by the light filtering in through sun and snow,

 

through the eyes of the guest

who has the audacity to grease a gleam

 

into the cracked credenza, into the wardrobe

with a broken door.

 

The song of old wood filling new spaces

fills me too, and I sing as I work,

 

drawing out the shine, reinventing

the place I live.

 

Dwell

 

The elements of my life

surround me now

 

in the house of elements,

 

where all is still and good and

sturdy as a ladder-back chair.

 

where air and books

and work and prayer

 

give life a grip as firm as

Job’s,

 

though I am the questioner

who seeks sure-footing

 

among the white and beautiful

bones

 

of this house that is built –

as God’s house surely must be –

 

of the space between

broken bars.

 

In silence, at night, I seed

pomegranates.

 

 

(c) Andreana Lefton