How does one gather
things incognisant of love?
Things that strayed so far alone they
have no idea how to belong?
Where does one fit the rusted
keys of a house long sold, its
wheezing now watermarking
your dreams? Let us ask this
leper under the bridge, his
wife stroking his denudated
candle-stump of a leg, what
wholeness means. Beside him
is his weary, blind bowl and a
misshapen gunny bag they
call home. I learn from them
that home is not arrival, not
a place, not even hope or dream.
It is the union of time and mind,
of inhabiting the present with what
you are, all that you have. I forget
misery. Summon a mud-house,
leaking roof, second-hand bicycle,
worn charpoy, the neem’s shade.
Marry it all to the moment, call it home.
- from Stitching a Home (2021)
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