<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div dir="auto" style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><p style="margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in;" class="">Journey Poem III</p><p style="margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in;" class="">Our whole life is a search party for home,<br class="">even if someone still greets us with open arms,<br class="">even if someone broke our spirit there,<br class=""><span class="gmail-textexposedshow">even if it was gutted and now it’s a parking lot.</span></p><p style="margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in;" class="">Home is the place where the curtains billow,<br class="">where the cat needs more milk<br class="">but she keeps crying for something else,<br class="">and the dog you never had licks you awake.</p><p style="margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in;" class="">After years of leaving home, <br class="">your heart becomes brick and mortar.<br class="">Your fingers are keys,<br class="">your feet concrete, hard to lift.</p><p style="margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in;" class="">Your body becomes the whole foundation<br class="">as you settle deeply into the only home<br class="">you knew, the one where the hump back whale<br class="">sings its way across the miles.</p><p style="margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in;" class="">It’s a place that lives at the water’s edge,<br class="">In the middle of the prairie,<br class="">hugged in between other homes<br class="">on a busy city street.</p><p style="margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in;" class="">In the end home is the lullaby and the prayer,<br class="">the blackberry bush that scraped your arms,<br class="">the broken porch light, <br class="">the bent screen door, the soft summer breeze.</p><p style="margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in;" class="">Home hands you coffee and kisses your neck<br class="">calls you crying as you say - I am afraid of leaving.<br class="">You leave anyway, then run like lightning <br class="">toward your own search party for home.</p><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;" class=""> - Laura Lentz</div></div></body></html>