It’s not so bad when you’re in a new place. It only gets bad when you’ve realized that you’ve left a place behind. It’s almost like hearing the shock and shatter of a plate hitting the ground—your head jerks up, your eyes widen, and you realize there’s a few pieces missing in your heart. A few broken, jagged pieces you’ll never be able to find and glue back together again.
I feel like I haven’t been home for years. It’s like I packed myself up and shipped myself somewhere while my heart got left behind. I’ve lived a life so up in the air I can’t even remember what the ground feels like anymore.
And your thoughts, your thoughts, your thoughts…they chase you while you walk down the street and yell at you over the TV and sing to you while the radio plays and finally, late at night, eyes are burning, streaming, they catch up and whisper and it’s the loudest thing you’ve heard all day.
“…Love what you have and you’ll have more love
You’re not dying
Everyone knows you’re going to love
Though there’s still no cure for crying…”
—Regina Spektor
“Firewood”
“I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.”
—Joyce Kilmer
“Whenever I walk to Suffern along the Erie track
I go by a poor old farmhouse with its shingles broken and black.
I suppose I’ve passed it a hundred times, but I always stop for a minute
And look at the house, the tragic house, the house with nobody in it.
I never have seen a haunted house, but I hear there are such things;
That they hold the talk of spirits, their mirth and sorrowings.
I know this house isn’t haunted, and I wish it were, I do;
For it wouldn’t be so lonely if it had a ghost or two.
This house on the road to Suffern needs a dozen panes of glass,
And somebody ought to weed the walk and take a scythe to the grass.
It needs new paint and shingles, and the vines should be trimmed and tied;
But what it needs the most of all is some people living inside.
If I had a lot of money and all my debts were paid,
I’d put a gang of men to work with brush and saw and spade.
I’d buy that place and fix it up the way it used to be,
And I’d find some people who wanted a home and give it to them free…
So whenever I go to Suffern along the Erie track
I never go by the empty house without stopping and looking back;
Yet it hurts me to look at the crumbling roof and the shutters fallen apart;
For I can’t help thinking the poor old house is a house with a broken heart.”
—Joyce Kilmer
“The Reading Mother”
—Strickland Gillilan
Rainy days with cold air rushing through the windows…
You can’t capture the sun
The way its beams go on forever
Sent from somewhere far away in the sky
You can’t capture the sun
Its light shining all around
Simply making the world a brighter place
And bringing smiles to people’s faces.
You can’t capture the sun
Or the golden lining of a cloud
When the globe hides behind it…
You can’t capture the sun,
But you can try…
