Rain outside,
Schubert within —
the old man taps his toes
as if in rapture
though I don’t know
what he really hears

We have a cozy place —
we’ve made it out of walls and paint
and music, heat, and light,
and presence and kindness

We are teaching ourselves
the art of home —
how to design the spaces,
how to build them,
how to provide
for all the flows we want to come through

We built this house
with hope and imagination.
Our young family emerged
and flowed through it,
filling some spaces, not using others
in the way we had imagined,
moving on, leaving behind
the cavities its movement carved,
the flotsam from its ebbing presence

We are teaching ourselves
what to take with us, what to let go,
how to make a house that fits how we live,
how to live so that our home
grows up around us in support.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 5, 2016