THE HOUSE OF MANY ROOMS

My house has many rooms
I lock or unlock at will.
Some brick-walled
Fortressed, forbidding.
Others with swinging doors
Where I wraithlike slither
From room to room
In the order of the moon's
Waxing and waning.
Or shuttle in reverse
In the quirky fashion of dreams.
Or flit from end to end
Edge to center and back again
Omnipresent in every which corner
In my house of many rooms.

My house has a charmed chamber
A treasure trove
Of mysterious joys
Of things old
And half forgotten
That I visit often
When the rains pour
And joints grow cold
And eyes mist with tears
Of remembering and forgetting.
The sun ever shines
Brooks gurgle
Birds twitter
And embers smolder
In that charmed chamber
In my house of many rooms.

You have this charmed place too
In your own house
Of many rooms
However far you have gone
To whatever clime.
The lark still sings
Teasing our shynesses
Awaking strangenesses.
When we cried over everything
And everything mattered
And laughed over nothing
Though nothing was funny
But not when it melted
Into the silence of goodbye.

Soon we will meet
In that chamber of charms
Where we all began
And to which we will come back
To know each other
For the first time.

(Written on the occasion of our high school grand reunion on February 7, 2009)