"Bless this House" by Terri Lynn Cummings

Bless this House

Terri Lynn Cummings

Barns raise their hats 

over the plain’s long gown

as I drive to the town 

where children grow like weeds

(as elders used to say)

Once white streets

cheeks ruddy from the iron                                   

of ancestors and kiss of earth

trace the past’s margins

Tar divides the road

into sections, quarters

where children challenge

games of Four Square

basketball bouncing

from corner to corner

Mothers glance through windows 

unafraid of cars running 

over daughters and sons

who welcome sun on shoulders 

without the slather of sunscreen

unknown as a safety belt

Now neglect peels from houses

starves gardens

rusts litters of cars and toys 

Spring scratches patches

like a hen seeking seeds

I face the house

with weeping mortar

spot the dwarf persimmon – 

a bush that christens our first house 

sheds petals on the past

tender as an infant’s skull

having nowhere else to fall

but down my throat

thirsting

Poet’s Notes:  The day I visited my parent’s graves, I drove past the first house my parent’s owned. I was three years old when we moved in, but I remember my father planting the dwarf persimmon bush. Our home held the precious coins of my childhood, shiny as sunlight. Yet time passed its hand over its face. So I wrote my longing to go back in time, visit my parents, first friends, neighbors, and the street where I belonged.