I had no curb appeal, no details to restore
and they never could afford an addition
or updates to my electrical system,
or to tame rattling windows, soothe creaking floors.
Yet I held them while they held their children:
child rocking in the womb, child clinging at the breast;
I held their favorite toys and the broken toy chest.
I held all the weeping and hiding and building.
Chubby-legged toddlers tumbled on my porch,
constructed foreign cities of wooden blocks,
then sprawled out in passionate late-night talks
and escaped me by streetlight, the neighborhood torch.
I was their shelter for every new stage:
their nursery and castle, with prisoners of war—
like a bureau with too much crammed in each drawer—
I held coming-of-age pains and pains of old age.
I hosted their failures and each grand endeavor,
I was classroom, lab, thinktank and chapel
Within me they pondered, prayed, and grappled –
and wished for a home that would last forever.
Karen D’Anselmi writes from the Hudson Valley of New York. Many of her poems are about family, faith, and the mystery of life.