A Word is Not a Home
A word is not a home
but we set our tables
between its walls,
cook meals, annoy
friends, abuse ourselves.
Sometimes I misplace
one, and can’t find
my house, much less
the window’s desk
or the chair behind it.
But if I wait, something
always takes form in the fog,
an arm, a ribcage, a feathered
hope struggling to emerge.
Inept, I take comfort
in these apparitions,
accept their offerings,
lose myself in mystery,
find shelter there
in the hollowed curves.
I so love this, Bob! I do set my table between its walls! Funnily, I have a poem coming out this spring which has in it the phrase “the dense foliage of words, long your home”. Is this a recent writing?
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Thanks, Lynne! We’re on the same wave length! Oh, I wrote it three or four years ago, and posted it here in September 2017.
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Oh Rob, always so good, to the heart, why we are here.
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Thanks, Jim. It is, indeed!
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One of my favorites by you 😍
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Thank you, Candice!
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Superbly penned my friend
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Good poem! Home (to me) is familiar welcoming turf, not necessarily one fixed spot. When I return to certain places, I am instantly “at home” … only one of those being my current mailing address. I have lived in buildings that never felt like home. When traveling, I often experience a sense of “home” nearby calling to me, ready to “take form in the fog” if only I will let it. (Tempting and scary all at the same time!)
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Home has never been edifice-based to me, but is instead person-based. I am at home now.
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