Home, being there

I feel at home here, where the air is familiar in my lungs, the light knows my skin, and a peace settles deep within me.Where the shadows hold mystery and brighten the phenomenon of a sunfilled meadow edged with wild apple trees,
And where the bear leaves us one apple, to share.

"There's a land in the West where nature is blessed

With a beauty so vast and austere,

And though you have flown off to cities unknown,

Your memories bring you back here.

'Home on the Range,'     Anonymous 

Last night a group of us shared what "Home" means to each one.  Of course the thought of home stretches to encompass each woman's experience, knowledge and wisdom.  It includes memories, senses, place.  It includes the full spectrum of emotion, feelings, beginnings and departures.  It includes Human, and Being.  

As we went around our circle, often the speaker would come home to the center of her being and tears would flow.  We ate a sumptuous potluck with three desserts.  For all of us home includes delicious, nutritious, colorful food, family, friends and for most... a dog or two.

Home is to share.  Home is sacred.  Home is a white room, with an open window softened by breezy sheer curtains.  

Home is a backpack or suitcase, home is a shopping cart.  Home can be lost or destroyed, blown up or blown away.   

Poem in Thanks

by Thomas Lux

Lord Whoever, thank you for this air

I'm about to in- and exhale, this hutch

in the woods, the wood for fire,

the light---both lamp and the natural stuff

of leaf-back, fern, and wing.

For the piano, the shovel

for ashes, the moth-gnawed

blankets, the stone-cold water

stone-cold:  thank you.

Thank you, Lord, coming for

to carry me here---where I'll gnash

it out, Lord, where I'll calm

and work, Lord, thank you

for the goddamn birds singing!

xoxoLC