Today my house is all spruced up
Festive and decked up
House proud am I
It has been a while
Since our last guest
Just for today it can pass any test
It suffers often, of unintended neglect
Tradeoffs, a career’s priorities
Discomfort with intrusive possibilities
An inability to be minimalistic
Admittedly ‘magpie’stic
Tumbling over the functional
A refusal to get clinical.
Resisting a consistent theme
Unbracketed, a gentle overflowing scheme
Corners that spill out longing
A controlled chaos of warmth, a little indulging
Of little things, many a distant moment
Little pieces of every where we went,
Trinkets of time, of the world experienced
Selected, sequinned and sequenced
Stamps of moments spent in other places
Littered across walls and surfaces
All members registered
Admitted and nestled.
A little unwieldy, these growing collections
A little accomodating, sometimes abandoned
A mosaic of nostalgic connections
A stage for constant readjustment, a steady theatre of shifting sand
The rambling order of a crowd
A collective whispering when you play your favourite songs aloud
A community of our indulgences,
A miniature world of us
An interpretation, a culmination
Of our past, present and future
A reflection, to our soul a mirror,
To our eyes a window
A garden to nurture and to grow
A library of books, celebrations and scars
Laden with the dust of our thoughts, of hopes and of stars
A little rested and contained.
A coccoon for our dreams, our world inside a dream
An immersion without restraint.
An umbrella, a base camp, an address for a passport stamp
A world within a world, where bruises heal, hopes are unfurled.
An invitation to the familiar, an acceptance of the unresolved
A place to start from, a place to return
The nuzzling of the known, the balcony to view the unknown
A taste of our cooking and the aromas of the kitchen
A set track for routines, a lounging den
With each milepost and decision
Shifting with us, our caravan
Evolving and anchoring,
Protecting and embracing
A mother ship. A recharge station
A cave it certainly is not.
A house to live in, to breathe out.
A place safe to chew the cud of life.
Moments low and high, happy and sad
Sometimes a refuge, sometimes a launch pad.
This shared world, the storybook of our life.
Ephemeral Memories 