Stitching a Home

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)