Surrounded by cowbird chicks
in sparrow's nest, gaping,
greedy mouths,
I contemplate
my losses.
Every childhood home, every
friend, my parents' marriage
and then my parents.
Every secret place of nature
that had for a time (which
is all time when you're
a child) held me
captive with
its spell.
All gone now.
Abandoned in middle age, I pull
together a household in a
stranger's house, cook
on a stranger's stove,
disallowed by weight
of contract from
hanging even
one picture
on the
wall,
my
walls
(their walls)
decorated only
by nine images of
imaginary houses, grand-
fathered in (I'm lucky we're
allowed curtains; shh don't tell
them), the doors weathered by
generations of the spiritually
homeless (like us),
anonymous,
and when
we
depart
we'll have
nothing to bequeath
(except the curtains, as there
were none when we moved in).
I think about this only because
Degrelle brought it up.
A stranger unknown to me,
a man who died the year
I graduated into home-
less adulthood, a man
who fought and
suffered and
longed and
loved and
died
in
a
world
so beyond
my comprehension
I can't conjure it up, a stalwart
soul who contemplated what
might forge a stalwart soul,
and his first thought
(among hearts)
was home.
Not home address or where you
spend most of your time
(which is certainly not
home for me),
but...
Home.
House, furnishings, cupboards
(what a lovely word, cup board),
and all that surrounds it,
forest, lake, stream,
shore, horizon,
field, hill,
path.
We are explorers, he said,
we are travelers. We see
so much, but the heart
sees all and wants
only home.
Want is a good word too.
To want is to lack.
We want a home.
We who are vagrants in a world
that's been reshaped around
us to exclude us, we who
have been dislodged
(another good word,
listen to it: dis
lodged)
from
our
context,
deprived
of our history,
our ancestors,
and above all, a
place of our own, a
place to call home.
Rootless.
Homeless.
We want roots.
We want to go home.
August 11, 2026
