Home

  My wife and I have a small home beside a river in a small town, but I wish I could more often feel like I’m home no matter where I happen to be. Home is our white stone house in Mystic, but home should also be the sidewalk I’m walking on, or the store where I’m browsing among beets and cabbages, or the forest in which we’re walking together on a summer day. Home, as we say, is where the heart is, and shouldn’t my heart be wherever I happen to be, whether floating on a river in a kayak or driving on a crowded interstate? Shouldn’t I feel just as “at home” pumping gas at a station miles from our house as doing the dishes in our kitchen? I live in little Mystic, but I also live in the limitless universe, so perhaps my real home is as vast as galaxies. It could be there are countless doors in my real home, all leading to moments that could be called miracles, all opening to places as comfortable and kindly as our living room on Riverbend Drive.  

This morning, we took a walk around some nearby neighborhoods, and it was fun to see the various homes along the way, each one expressing its cozy homey-ness in its own special way . I love walking on woodland trails with Delycia, but this morning I found joy in just appreciating the various homestyles, the different kinds of comfort, that we saw along the road.

COMING HOME
 
He comes home each time
a happy thought comes home to him.
Happiness has its home all around him
but he doesn't know it
until one of its thoughts
lets itself quietly down to him
and he shakes with happiness,
and there he is,
home in happiness,
where he's always been
but didn't know it.