Daily Poem: Home ~ Elaine Feinstein
Home
~ Elaine Feinstein
Where is that I wonder?
Is it the book-packed house we plan to sell
with the pale green room above the river,
the shelves of icons, agate, Eilat stone
the Kathe Kollwitz and the Samuel Palmer?
Or my huge childhood house
oak-floored, the rugs of Autumn colours, slabs of coal
in an open heart, high-windowed rooms,
outside, the sunken garden, lavender, herbs
and trees of Victoria plum.
Last night I dreamed of
my dead father, white-faced, papery-skinned
and frailer than he died. I asked him:
– Doesn’t all this belong to us? He shook his head,
bewildered. I was disappointed,
but thought I woke with salt on my lips then
and a hoarse throat, somewhere between
the ocean and the desert, in an immense
Mexico of the spirit, I remembered
with joy and love my other ties of blood.
