Homestead

It was spring  
and everything was new–
Life and love and everything,
and everything we planted grew!
The door you’d made was open wide,
the scent of new wood on the air
that brought the warmth of spring inside
and stirred your soft and tawny hair…

Summer came  
and baby’s laughter rang
through the vine-thick upper frame,
and all the lullabies I sang
while lower, latch secure,
kept little wandering feet within.
Oh, summers then were sweet and pure…
So many summers there have been!

Autumn gusts
and leaves all scattered:
reds and yellows, browns and rusts,
and harvesting was all that mattered;
That door seemed always on the swing,
and the floor was never swept!
The light in your eyes made me sing…
The nights were cool, but warm, we slept…

Winter closed    
that Dutch door tight
and by the woodstove, we supposed
that snow would come, most every night.
We had each other all those years–
the kids, the cats, the dogs, the bird–
We laughed, and loved, and had no fears!
The storms outside, we hardly heard…

Seasons rolled,    
as they are wont to do
and sometime, somehow, we grew old,
your fine wood door, no longer new…
I went last week, and looked again:
It still holds firm, below, above–
and “now” has not forgotten “then,
when it was built with youth and love!

2006