Poem: At Home in Strange Places

At Home in Strange Places

You open the door to a new place,
to new smells and silences,
where there are no familiar paths
and there is fog, everywhere.

You step onto the porch and wonder
at the magnitude of change, realizing
this is not just a move from one house to another,
but a move of spirit

where, for a time, everything will be shrouded
in the fog that surrounds you,
where the internal compass that has become so comfortable
from fifty years in the same place
now spins wildly, and there is no certainty.

Your eye scans for a horizon, and finds none;
for landmarks, and again... none
save a lone tree in the distant field,
bare and stripped by harsh winters
a faint and grey beacon.
You button your coat against the cold,

and walk boldly into the morning of mist,
unsure, but unafraid, sure only
that God's March morning will, in her own time,
reveal all.

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The picture was taken in Rupert, Vermont. You can click on it for a larger version.

Tom