#50: If It Fits - Where It! (Home)

You've Seen The Oak And Smelled The Rose,
And Watched The Dying Stage Their Shows . . .
Awaited Heaven, 'Til Hell Hath Froze.
There Isn't Much You've Missed.
But, No Matter How It Comes And Goes,
The Sleeping Wake, And Waking Doze,
And All Eternal Decompose,
You Ain't Seen Naught Like This!

We approached a drive, eventually,
that led to a big facade.
It represented, architecturally,
all structures known to God.

There were two or three split levels, and
two-stories, and a ranch.
Brick and stone and wood were mixed
in a homey avalanche.

There was a place to lube your car . . .
a pen for cows and sheep.
An arcade of a thousand games
spread out behind the heap.

"This place would take a couple of weeks
for us to fully roam,"
Jo surveyed the whole collage
of places we called "home."

There was the creek and farmhouse,
and all the building shapes . . .
and Jo said, "This place looks like most
all our youth's landscapes."

We walked inside to check it out,
and waded through each room.
Each memory of every address
was there, somehow, entombed.

Every chamber, stair and hallway
was piled from floor to roof,
with decor out of every house
to which my family moved.

There was Modern and French Provincial,
with Colonial added in,
and thrown against a backdrop of
Mediterranean.

Antiques abounded, along with kitsch,
stacked in all the rooms . . .
souvenirs from nowhere special
piled up with fine heirlooms.

Jo and I were taking turns
with pieces of the past.
He found a stack of forty-fives.
I scoped a cedar chest.

For a while we felt contented to
be looking through old stuff . . .
with close to half the feeling that
these things had been enough.

The stubs of concert tickets, and
the keys to my old cars
could all be rediscovered, packed
in boxes, cans and jars.

We saw a door that led out back.
I followed Jo on through.
The room was dark . . . we couldn't see
the things we bumped into.

Jo found a switch, and hit the light,
and there, before us, lay
the weapons of every family game
we'd ever chanced to play.

There were balls of all descriptions . . .
bowling, to foot and base . . .
paddles and sticks sat lonely for
a warrior's fresh embrace.

Horseshoes, Frisbees, and a hundred decks
of various kinds of cards
lay with countless board-games, and,
croquet for pools and yards.

And then I spied behind some cues
what looked like posterboard.
It was faded, but we still could read
where players had been scored.

At least a dozen events and games
were listed 'cross the top . . .
with twenty names down the margin,
in colored Marks-A-Lot.

"Boy, this brings back memories,"
Jo pointed to "Ping-Pong."
"Hey, this says I didn't play.
That's got to be all wrong!"

I was about to laugh and comment, but,
I stopped to feel the shake
of what I thought right then to be
Ohio Street's earthquake.

Jo and I had certainly learned
through this Dionysian dance,
that nothing we had experienced
happened just by chance.

Before we left that room to wind
our way back to the street,
we added up the scores to find
John May was in the lead.

For a minute we were reabsorbed
in boxes full of junk,
when Jo-Mima found the corner where
they put the memory trunk.

Both Jo and I, together, stilled
our private inner laughs,
as we started fumbling through the stacks
of family photographs.

And after a couple of celluloids,
I guess we got the hint.
"We aren't here to remember," I said,
"but rather to repent."

Shots of laughter, shots of love,
and shots of funny shit,
filled the pictures, while each one had
a hole in the heart of it.

"Hey, I remember this very shot,"
Jo handed me the pic . . .
we were playing billiards, but
John May sure knew the trick.

"So, why is everybody there,
but you and I are gone?
It's like somebody's makin' look
like we might not belong."

I grabbed a pile of boxes and tried
to keep from falling down,
as another quake rattled the house,
from roof to underground.

And I'd just looked at a picture of
the family on a beach,
but those same holes then made me feel
lost and out of reach.

"Well I don't get it," I said to Jo.
"Even the photos, grunged,
with dust from back to baby times
are showing us expunged.

"It's weird," Jo added, "about these shots.
All the family throng
is exactly where they're s'posed to be,
but where do we belong?"

That's when I thought we'd bought it.
Plaster started to crack.
We stumbled toward the door that we
just hoped would get us back.

The chandeliers were swinging,
and stuff bounced off the floor.
I grabbed a knob, turned and pushed,
and half fell through the door.

There, rumbling, and all revved up,
was not our taxi, but
our Concept Carriage, and Jo said, "Hey,
I think I figured what . . .

exactly might be happening here . . .
'Belong's' the magic word.
We've said it a couple of times, and then
we've felt the shaking Earth.

And more than that, I think that now
I can kind-of see
the message from that nut-ball of
a philo-cum-cabbie.

We came and found and recognized
not just domiciles,
but houses that were far apart
by lots of time and miles.

And when we found those boxes filled
with all those photographs,
we saw our folks and siblings,
lovers and better-halfs . . .

grandmas and grandpas, uncles and aunts,
the extended family . . .
but every picture had a hole
right where we should be.

It's not the shelters nor the toys,
nor rooms of furnishings . . .
that make us feel that we belong.
We don't belong to things.

Things will change as crazy as
this jigsaw-puzzled den . . .
but home is really any place
we find our families in."

I thought I caught a parting glimpse
of cabbie and his toad . . .
but the roaring of the Buggy said
it's time to hit the road.