Content

If I ever go back to the home
of my children’s birth,
there are homes I want to visit again, particularly
Jefferson’s favorite,
to see the sparse beauty that spurred me
to become a creature of less,
desiring less, content with time and space and light
and love.

About this poem

The picture is of Poplar Forest, Thomas Jefferson’s lesser know home, and by his own accounts, his favorite. Smaller and simpler than Monticello, I adore it. The space, The light. The simplicity.

I went there soon after my separation and divorce about 15 years ago, and it opened my eyes to the beauty of simplicity, something that is such a part of my life now. I keep coming back to this picture again and again, just because I look at it and feel my pulse slow, my tension leave and I smile in a strange kind of bliss.

That’s why we take pictures, to capture the way we see and the feelings that deserve to be remembered.

Tom