Saturday, May 19, 2012

Going Home

You have been going home for awhile now
Somewhere between here and there
the dining table, the window and the view
The grass is familiar and as always, greener
Concrete beneath fence posts
      "to keep the weeds out" you said
Concrete to keep the weeds out
That explains a lot to me
How men become men
How boys become their fathers
And how fathers become their sons
That explains the constant tending of us
The trimming of us
The keeping
The care
The love of us
And the work it takes to keep the weeds out
     the crab grass, the creeping jenny and the chickweed
The broad leaf brush strokes that painted a picture
Outside that dining room window
Where better times were kept by hand
       No power
       No gas or oil
       Just blades and the bodies that pushed them
Trimmed, by hand
Cut, by hand
Kept
by hand
Hand in hand you walk with it
Heart in hand we walk with it
We cry with it
This moment in these frail hands
How small bodies hold down such large lives
Enormous souls seemingly grounded
And magnificent
There is not enough fence post
Not enough concrete
So we wait for church songs
and the freedom from them
From poetry and its bricks
We wait for 93 years to come
For 70 years and 70,000 I love you's
We wait for just one more
For children
and their children
and theirs
     A garden
Tended by time and what you made of it
Not always in the rows you intended
but still,
Growing
A garden still
You, still
Home, Virgil
You can go home


submitted to dverse poets open link night (find their link on the sidebar to the right)

5 comments:

  1. life def does not always happen in nice neat rows....and it is what you make of what you have been given...i like the play with the concrete and fences as well...How small bodies hold down such large lives...great line that too...

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  2. hey good to read you again.. A garden
    Tended by time and what you made of it
    Not always in the rows you intended
    but still,
    Growing...i like the interplay with what we can influence (and It's quite a bit) and what not..

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  3. Apart from the subject matter which rings familiar and true, I have to say the voice comes through on this , telling its tale intimately and with a natural cadence... Nicely laid out too with the line breaks

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