Home

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Wherever this is,
we’re right
in the middle…

Brief and forever,
where sweetness mingles
with the mundane
and joy wraps
her gentle fingers
around sorrow’s
age-worn hand.

Where silly rhymes echo
between the serious beeps
of machines in cold corridors.
And tinsel,
sellotaped to hospital desks,
shimmers in the electric light
and whispers,
‘Home, this is not home.’

Where laughter, warmth,
tea and toast,
dreams and duvet days
must reckon also
with silence and loss,
betrayal and the
everyday fallibility
that haunts us
broken people.

Whatever this is.
Whatever it means
and whatever it amounts to,
in the end,
it is sacred.

I can feel the meaning
beating in the blue veins
under my thin skin,
rising warm in the
corners of my eyes
and buzzing
in the very air

And outside
among the browning leaves
and fussing wind-blown sparrows,
I hear a whisper,
‘Home, this is home.’