A Poem for a Thursday #164

E. B. White, of Charlotte’s Web fame, was also an essayist and poet. I featured one of his poems here. I came across today’s poem quite a while ago in a poetry book I checked out from the library. I took a photo of the page and then forgot about it. I found it again when I was scrolling through my photos and liked it all over again. It fits in well with the post I wrote recently about going home.

Home is the place where the queer things are:
Hope and compassion and objets d'art.
Home is the centre of mind and of liver,
Under the hill and beside the river.
Home is the strangest of common places,
Drenched with the light of familiar faces.
Here are the leavings of last night's table,
Gloom and gaiety, stoop and gable.

Home is the proving ground of sanity,
Brick and ember, love and vanity,
Paper and string and the carpet sweeper,
And the still form of the late sleeper.
Book and clock, and a plant to water,
Mother of Jesus, son and daughter.
Home is the ink and the dream and the well;
Home is the incompatibles' hell.

Home is the depot of coming and going,
The last kiss, the first snowing.
Home is the soldier's destination,
The sick man's ward, the wife's plantation.
Home is the place where the queer things are:
Hope and compassion and objets d'art.
Home is the pattern and shell of slumber,
Home is a gleam and a telephone number.

Ever at home are the mice in hiding,
Dust and trash, and the truth abiding. 
Dark is the secret of home's hall closet--
Home's a disorderly safe deposit.
Home is the part of our life that's arable,
Home is a pledge, a plan, and a parable.
Ever before us is home's immensity,
Always within us its sheer intensity. 

Home Song
E. B. White