Yem
By Tom Pickard
how make this place
home?
what is home
anyway?
& where
this place
that needs
be home?
how we
make it
whenever,
wherever:
roof, rooms, fire,
walls, bed, stairs
to walk up
and down,
shelves
to order thought,
doors to open,
close, to
keep out
and in,
taps to turn on,
water
to drink
and wash,
light to read
and bathe in:
_____
we, is
always home
we, is
where we live
when,
whenever,
where,
wherever,
with you
is,
has always
been
(so
unalone,
so,
unsingular)
home,
at last
_____
a place to be born
and wake in,
somewhere
to be,
to
return to,
to go out
from:
a shelter
subject to floods, to fire
and other
attritions,
to bombing,
demolition,
to pestilence
and plague,
to bulldoze
eviction
from anywhere
and everywhere,
to exile
from
here,
from now
_____
to be without
a heart
is to be
without a home,
to be without
& within
at once,
a home
Source: Poetry (October 2020)