The home

He’ll clean his house for years
watching worlds pass by outside:
sidewalk novels, street romances
an endless cast portrayed—
shifting sands, new dunes each day.
And still the house keeps clean.
The sands pass through, of course,
cross his threshold and back out;
he wipes their dust off of his chairs
and vacuums them from shining floors—
it is not for them he cleans, rather
it is their trace he wipes away.
On cloudy days, sometimes he wonders
for whom he daily labors; yet
somewhere secret in his chest
he knows already that moment;
sees it nobly announce itself
with smiling eyes, to say—
“How beautiful it is here,
how loved I feel, to enter,”
to his reply: “Yes, welcome home!”

November 2019