This month’s playlist embodies both the cheerful, feel-good sound of Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros to the soulful croon of Bill Withers. We’ve got lots of tunes for you to listen to and dance along with (in your socks) in that space you call home.
Home. It’s the place where we would like to find the most comfort. A safe haven and a corner of the globe where we can be ourselves, surrounded in warmth by those we love. New or old, home can be a constant amid an ever-changing world. Writer Amy Tan once described what the future might hold for her hundred-year-old island dwelling:
Every night, before sleep, I admire the water, the indigo island against an India ink sky. In a hundred years someone else will stand before this window. She will notice how the water looks different every day, how it is also the same. She will wonder if anyone ever lived on the island. She will write the answer in poetry.
Try It
If, many years from now someone were to live in your home, what would you want them to know about it? What does house and home mean to you? Talk about its comforts and your favorite spaces. What might be different? What will always remain the same? Write your answer in poetry.
Featured Poem
Thanks to everyone who participated in last week’s poetry prompt. Here’s a poem from Andrew we enjoyed:
Friends came to houses in days past,
‘Tis said in hushed and sombre tones
That carries well along the lines
Connecting all our phones.
And in the gardens, children played
With hoop and ball, in season’s Fall
Or in its summer time of joy.
Where now do their shrill voices call?
Granted, all was not well, but in the cold
A family shared a space of red
Before the fireplace, all together
Before the slumbers of their bed.
Old songs and secret rhymes
Of holly, mistletoe and wine
Were staples of the day.
Why, then, could they not stay?
Now when the Christmas dinner’s done
The children crowd for presents earned
For good behaviour. A phone, a laptop, books
Printed on screens and never learned.
And I, the hypocrite, with phone in hand
Write down the thin and drawn out lines
Of one who now relies upon a screen
And not the craft of older times.
—by Andrew
Photo by Javi Sánchez de la viña. Creative Commons via Flickr.
Browse more writing prompts
Browse poetry teaching resources
How to Write a Poem uses images like the buzz, the switch, the wave—from the Billy Collins poem “Introduction to Poetry”—to guide writers into new ways of writing poems. Excellent teaching tool. Anthology and prompts included.
“How to Write a Poem is a classroom must-have.”
—Callie Feyen, English Teacher, Maryland
- Poetry Prompt: Misunderstood Lion - March 19, 2018
- Animate: Lions & Lambs Poetry Prompt - March 12, 2018
- Poetry Prompt: Behind the Velvet Rope - February 26, 2018
Donna says
Very clever, Andrew! I love how your piece plays off of the old and the new – 🙂
Finding that balance is hard, isn’t it? Especially as a parent who’s well aware that little eyes are watching. I hear you.
Andrew H says
Thanks for your kind comment!
Robbie Pruitt says
Home
Home is not walls.
Home is not hearth,
bedroom, kitchen, or halls.
Home is breath, life, people,
and family, or nothing at all.
© December 8, 2015, Robbie Pruitt
Heather Eure says
“Home is breath…” I especially like this, Robbie. Thank you for sharing.
Robbie Pruitt says
Thanks for the comment and the thoughtful prompt!
Ken Denk says
Dig it, Robbie.
Robbie Pruitt says
Thanks Ken! Means a lot coming from you brother. You need to be on this site. Hope you are well my friend and hope to see you this summer sometime. Be well.
Ken Denk says
Forwarding Address Requested
Many homes have
housed these bones,
walls and floors
like arms and laps,
ghosted with the echoes
of lives lived within,
where the setting
becomes part of the cast.
See these dwellings as people
the shape and carry of them
in mind’s eye,
like family,
miss them each as much,
or not,
when they are gone
as aunts or uncles,
cozy grandparents,
or lovers turned cold.
Each parting,
taken through packing,
pallet and postal change,
is a grieving,
change of chapter
in the story of ourselves,
close and lock the door,
drop off the key,
turn the page.
Robbie Pruitt says
This is great, Ken! Love the fist line. “Many homes have housed these bones”…fantastic play on words.
Heather Eure says
So good! Thank you for sharing this, Ken.
Andrew H says
Memories, memories like phantom ghosts
Of those that I once knew. I had a friend
Who sat upon that stool, and we talked politics
Or fantasy, together over nights that never seemed to end.
That piano, you know, has seen ten thousand hands
Shaped like my own. Eyes that saw just the same
As mine, and heard familiar noises from the lands
Around once sat and listened, curious as I am.
Polished mantle and silver couch, drenched in the tears
Of those who came before. Old Oak tree in the front,
That I hung a tire in to swing, which it was said
Was once my great-great grandfather’s haunt.
Dark wood, old tiles, old beam, rough seam.
Buildings out back no longer in their use
As barn, or farm, or house.
It seems a vision when I see, it seems a dream;
An image from the past. Ten times ten thousand hands
Rebuke or praise me for each action that I take.
Father in the kitchen, mother beside the fire
Talking as I tried to remain – in vain – awake.
This is my home, and it was my family’s home.
It was their cradle, and their tomb
Just as it will be mine when I am gone
And newer voices sound inside my room.
Heather Eure says
A rich and evocative poem, Andrew. Thank you!
Prasanta says
When Home
It isn’t simply the camellias
or dogwoods that draw me home
but a string that pulls,
pushes Appalachia aside
and drags me under the Chattahoochee
with the catfish.
I resurface in the creek down the street,
catch my breath on a blanket of pine needles
on banks of sticky red clay.
When I am home
the honeysuckle is sweet
if taken straight from the vine,
and it’s easy to fold within
like hibiscus and tulips at dusk
while recalling decades of memories
fading like zinnias in winter.
When I am home,
once again a child,
daffodils bow to spring
and four o-clocks wake at last,
sweetly lost somewhere in between
the fringes of the day.
When you are home
you can find out where the
breath blowing on the dandelion
will send you.
You hear voices in every room
as you drift away.
When you are home
maybe you can bloom like a
white magnolia
When home.
Andrew H says
I really liked this. It almost seems abstract, and yet manages to be so full of colour.
Prasanta says
Thank you, Andrew!