At Home Without a Home
The semi-trailer sits at the farm,
a gift from your dad,
holding everything we own,
except some of our clothes,
and that of our sons,
and Pampers.
Homeless, my pride beaten down,
humility or is it humiliation, it’s master.
Your pride is not a self-consuming
passion, the first of an
ever-growing realization
that I’m not the educator of our family
but a merely a student
learning at your feet.
Your pride is measured
in our sons, in our marriage,
our homelessness not a
defeat, but a mere fact.
Your own family’s past,
family falling upon family
during times of difficulty and duress,
defines what is important.
Shuffling between families’ homes
an inconvenience of love,
not acts of desperation.
As long as we and our sons are together
no longer is home narrowly defined
to structures above or below ground,
but only defined by relationship.
You are at home in our homelessness.
(c) 2012, Robert Charles Wagner. All rights reserved.
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