Here's a recent poem

                                                 Home

Is where your heart is…

A silly jingle, but like many

True,

Once you get over the idea of the heart

Representing all kinds of far more complicated stuff…

You know, like the feelings you get running your hands

Over the rough spot on a bedroom door

From being touched there by you

And whosever gone in there with you,

Maybe hundreds, or even thousands of times.

Or the paint you’ve rubbed off the top rail of the metal bed frame

That you bought at a yard sale when your first was born,

That you always held onto

When you’d come in singing softly

To help them fall asleep.

Whew, and that’s only two places in ‘home’ isn’t it?

And there are hundreds, or maybe even thousands

More.

Then time passes.

Friends and family leave, get ill,

Maybe, pass on, as your memories do,

Despite you saying that that will never happen.

You move on.

Close to a son or daughter,

Who help you find a smaller house,

Or an apartment or a condo,

Without stairways or basements;

With washers and dryers next to the furnace

And just around the corner from the kitchen.

You’ll be by a major university with lots of programs,

And some classes to take,

And of course, there’s more:

You’re close to old friends from a book club,

Or some alum friends who also live nearby.

On your birthday,

They throw you a party.

They raise their glasses

Of Champagne

To toast you:

“Here’s to your new home.”

They’re all smiling.

You smile back,

But it never, never, never, never, is.