Home

I feel myself relax the moment I walk in the room.
There are a few chairs along the wall. A spinning wheel.
And space.
And light.

We have lost the art of emptiness.
There is a need to fill each moment,
to schedule, to make sure we have every moment accounted for,
every space in our homes, full,
every hour of our workday actively, measurably, productive.
Uncomfortable in the silence of soul searching,
afraid of what we will find in our own darkness,

There are no places to empty ourselves.
To add the new. To grow. We are pot bound plants
in a dark corner, straining towards light
but captured by all we have and all we do and all
that is expected.

Take this, world.
Expect less.
of me at least.
I have spent myself in your service.
Crowded myself out of my own life,
but I am old now. And happier for it.
I have discovered the real needs in my life.
Space.
Light.

So simple. The rest, ultimately, can go.
They are things. They belong to others.
For me, I am happy in the empty places.
I find peace there. I draw strength and possibility,
able at last to choose what I fill my flickering life with,
and what I release. Able to love more fully
for the lack of burdens. Somehow more with less.

I sit in one of the chairs.
I do not know if it is allowed or not but no one is here.
In a way, it is fitting that this is a museum.
Less is an antique concept after all,
and yet… it is my future. One chosen.
One I finally admit I could have chosen all along,
but did not, dazzled by more details than I could process,
a mad juggler in love with my ability to always add
one more thing, until the space and the light are lost.

I sit in one of the chairs.
I see the room, but not the things.
The space.
The light.
I am home.

About this poem.

Sometimes it seems like the last 15 years have been spent trying to release things. I am only somewhat successful, but that is where my heart lives.

The picture was taken at the American Frontier Culture Museum in Staunton, Va.

Tom