New House

 

What makes one house sing

when others barely hum?

What electricity calls our names

in resonance with walls and spaces?

Is there some language that summons each to each,

and why does its energy defy description?

A house reflects the love within

and draws more to itself. Why else

would one choose the old and battered

over the pristine new?

Sometimes it makes no sense—

but love defies logic. 

Sometimes, a place is simply there, 

and needs a loving hand.   

 

explained in the pen-scratched

images from decades, years, from centuries gone by.

I collected them:

fragile paper, battered books that charmed me

with their condensation of facts and observations.

These maps and books are journeys in themselves,

allowing us to follow in the footsteps of

our fathers and grandfathers, laying out

the perils, the impossibilities, the romance of

traversing the unknown.

These maps, these guides, these books

encompass their hopes, their fears,

their triumphs--

and failures, too—heartbreaking failures.

Whether the goals were gold, or land, or freedom,

whether they sought simply to know

what lay beyond the mountains....

this assemblage is their story,

as it is ours.

Mary McElveen (2018)

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