Going Home
       

In my mother's house
            are many mansions. In her house
two hundred Sunday dresses
            hang by their necks. Sheet music
swallows the room where Elvis first appeared
            on Ed Sullivan, where sixty-seven Christmas trees
shone in the window, and ten clocks mark
                                    eleven different hours. In her house

I am a lost child. I rethink Dickinson
            to the tune of Amazing Grace. Rethink Jenny and me
in the dim garage lifting our shirts, the nearby church
                        bells striking us out
                                into sunlight without a word.

Her house is a hand-cranked music box
            looping Lennon's Imagine. Or, that's the sound
in my teeth. This house is
            my mother's adjustable skate. The missing key. It's

a sewing basket that has been passed down,
                        and in it, a bright cushion stuck with pins.

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Copyright © 2021 Laura Van Prooyen All rights reserved
from Frances of the Wider Field
Lily Poetry Review Books
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission