Hello readers, I wrote this poem as a response to my pastor’s prompt on sharing about our experiences in childhood and COVID-19. It was a great opportunity to reflect on my formative years and these last six months, and I look forward to sharing it with you! Enjoy.

Home was five green acres
mowed every weekend
Growing despite cutting
Verdant and resplendant

Home was back and front yards
Apple trees, swings, and sheds
Weeding and playing tag
Dying pines, changing reds

Home was the maple tree
With russet leaves flaring
Frisbee golf post Seven
And the birth of daring

Home was the kitchen sink
Cooking, cleaning, brewing
Sandwiches, stews, and tea
Pockmarked brown floor sweeping

Home was the dining room
For popcorn, pain, parties
Repainting, coffee, school
Food and theology

Home was the living room
Family pictures hung
Clive Staples Lewis read
But songs of joy not sung

Home was the full bedroom
Stinky, messy, LEGOs
With love and rivalry
From where my Self still grows

Home was the attic floor
Dreamt of, renovated
Into two quiet rooms
Storage, and bathroom space

Home was the long driveway
Bike races, tilling gravel
The circle, barn, and smores
Runway for world travel

But to this day,

Home is filled with people
Always worth visiting
Though they can drive me mad
From them are songs to sing

Home is complicated
Brothers, sisters, siblings
Mother, father, elders
Loving, fighting, laughing

Home is life’s foundation
From it all people grow
How its still making me
I thrill to come to know

Home, though always changing
Is always found in tears
In staring into eyes
In baring my deep fears

Home’s abstract and concrete
Where and in whom I rest
It is the balm of God
Yes, God, that loving pest

For Home, my dear loved friends,
is finding I’m not alone
That I am loved so deeply
And somehow, truly known