author’s note:
I find that I can’t see the best in myself without, in the process, also encountering the worst.
MY HOME
Home. Every time I wake up
I discover someone else
in the room--so crowded now--I’m forced to expand--
I can’t even open
a cabinet door without
finding a body
curled to fit the space--
a body perhaps dormant, perhaps newly born,
perhaps someone who looks
just like you--
and perhaps
just like me.
These shadows require
a host. They require responsibility--
how do I respond to what they tell me?--
the best and the worst are
both overwhelming--I feel like running
in a circle.
I can not invite
you in--where would you sit?
Too much commotion
for you to be comfortable
in this house.
I feel another knocking now
against the walls of my stomach,
against the walls of my heart.
But I do realize there are
benefits. For one thing,
I have learned tolerance.
Can I now hope to receive:
the recompense of
your tolerance?--
can you be tolerant of me--
of me and all my
spiders and cats, all my mongrels,
Mongols, buzzards, crones
war heroes, cattle herds,
megaphones,
sulking ghosts,
ladies in silhouette,
bank robbers, monks,
mountebanks, wounded doctors,
seamstresses, sewer lines,
altars, robots, toads,
that high-stepping dictator
with his servant girl in
hangman’s pigtails
and
a dragonfly leading
a squadron of bees
--?--
to name only a few.
© 2006, Michael R. Patton
dream steps blog
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artwork for poetry blog
email: michaelpatton@lycos.com
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