Member-only story
P O E T R Y
For All the Days To Come
The stepping stones of memories on the long journey home
Peace and rest at length have come
All the day’s long toil is past,
And each heart is whispering, ‘Home,
Home at last’— Thomas Hood
How many borders do we cross,
how many membranes of the mind
on a journey back home?
Home is more time than place
but a pull like a tide draws me back
My bulldog Orson
will be waiting for me there
wagging his short tail so hard
he falls and scrambles upright.
Inside the house there will be music, voices
the aroma of warm chocolate chip cookies
My sister and I will smile and
drink chilled cider on the cedar deck
and I’ll promise once again
to fix the broken railing “soon”
and we will laugh
We will talk about the good times
memories we see in each other’s eyes
sparkling, bubbling up, stories too good
to tell without breaking into laughter,
and we’ll kindle a fire of apple wood and oak
and silently sit on the hearth
knowing this moment, this love is a
single beating heart we share
for all the days to come
And now the miles have wound out
the blur of highway diners and truck stops
the state lines where I’ve stopped and
wondered if I should continue on
this solemn journey of the soul
But finally I am here, home
the last surviving sibling
I am home, standing by the roadway
looking up a paved drive where
our small home was razed,
a sterile monolith of rock and glass
now shoehorned into a tidy forest glen
that nature intended for a cottage
