"News Piece" (Questing for Home)

There was a news piece
on the radio this morning:
about people displaced from
their homes for many
many months now after
the destructive Fall firestorms
in Southern California.

They all possess such heavy disappearances.
Gone are favorite chairs and bedroom doors,
cherished notes from friends or grandmothers,
dressers full of socks and secrets,
smooth well worn banisters,
the reassurance of neighborly connections,
grade school artwork and
cardboard boxes piled with photographs and buttons.
No longer are the easy familiar
smells of cinnamon toast on Monday morning
and roasting chicken on Sunday
redolent in the air of home for them.
They sense the absences of floors feeling just right
beneath the stepping foot,
and have become a kind of nomad floating
in the suburban drift of San Diego.

It can occur sometimes that a person
or whole family loses home due to disaster,
job transfer, gypsy wanderlust,
or necessary migration,
and although may live later
tidily under a tile roof within four
sturdy walls in a house well stocked
with warm beds and blankets, a silver
toaster on granite counters, and a large deep
bathtub, they might wander forever in a subtle grayness,
unplaced and unconsciously forlorn.

Searching,
not quite rooted in the real,
their calloused tired
or soft pink feet
have partly
forgotten
the sacred touch
of the safely known
ground of particular,
pleasurable being.

And so,
may all such persons
who inch along
such a meandering
hard packed path
find in their hidden
mourning and seeking
small havens of time
warm with comfort,
the goodness of place
and true belonging.
May moments of grace’s gaze
leaping between them and a found friend
proffer a new dwelling
for hope, clarity of sweet
waters running strong
from every forest,
and a returning
some where
so welcoming,
as in the center of a circle
of love and memory
or
quiet
human joy.