To be separated like this
Feels too old fashioned
You in your high tower
And me in my moat
I do not beg
Or ask you to come down
I tired of shouting months ago
I just row this little boat
Circling
The smell of you
Wafting through tapestries
Out of stone windows
I do not even know
If i would like it
If they lowered the bridge
To let me in
At this point
I think I might
Just rather row

Conservative, old-fashioned, god-fearin’ folk,
busted trailers filled with odd treasures
post offices the size of dog houses
proud American flags
smokers
Guns
Potato Salad
Abandoned video stores with sun-bleached cut outs of Indiana Jones
1,000 newly opened craft breweries
Hills
Checkerboards of soybean fields
Three generations of broken tractors in a front yard
Football
Pageants
Corn
Hill-top cemeteries packed tight into thick wet soil with the bodies of people you love, decomposing
A lake that looks like an ocean
Amish buggies in a Kroger parking lot
a place to tie up your horse at a gas station
Farm dogs
Log piles
Confederate flags
Little hippy towns with blue-haired 11 year old kids playing chess
Septic tanks
people feeding other people and calling it “a ministry”

If home is knowing
Then we are far from home now

out on a long walk
with no shoes

out in the unnameable tundra

braving
or hiding

building or denying

but all trying

all trying

if shelter is complacency
we are without nest

all of our belongings
torn from dresser drawers
thrown in the streets

all of our ummentionables
exposed

if a bed is a place
to hide from truth
we fear we might never sleep again

standing in fields
clutching cold pillows
wondering when the gift
will be ours again
when we will belong to sleep again

we are frightened
but bold
we are learning a new craft
learning how to build
new houses
new beds
fresh comforts

the security of knowing is gone
but we will not
always stand in the field

not with our newfound
ingenuity

creativity and fearless construction

we may never go back to the places we know

but we can build new ones

and they will be homes if we say so