Finding a Home - Art & Time Project

by Wendie Busig-kohn and Oswald LeWinter

Finding a home
Finding a home
Is rising from the dead
Is arriving
After countless destinations
have drowned in the undertow of disappointment
in countless voyages
of blinded passions
to bleak moments near vague ruins
or to cities by water
where we wept once beneath gardens of despair
like Babylon, but that are now no more
than fingerprints of sand
beneath the soft veils of the eternal sea
Is arriving before unexpected gates,
before white washed walls known only
as a place to lean against
to conquer the brief discomfort of fetid air
that accompanies such hard adventures
as uncertain searches

Finding a home
is suddenly to enter
the surprise of the body's knowing~
the temple of honored instincts~
and to feel the heart
abandon its monotonous plodding
and return to its anvil nature, to hammering
its joy into an airy foam.
It is more than stone and stucco,
wood and glass, steel and concrete,
it is more than comfort,
more than shelter,
more than the refusal
to be lost, to be a squatter
in the sparsely furnished cellar of one's soul.

Finding a home
is to uncover beneath charred albums
of gaudy memories, of myriad lives,
a closed tin hidden amid toy princes
and the woolly dragons of childhood
knowing it holds
a long lost determination
not merely to live, to survive,
but to prevail, to force the spirit
like the tip of flowering through soot and loam
until its greeness breaks the dark
like torches scattering the gloom
into a million black leaves in the saddle of the wind.

Finding a home is not finding
a chance for choices, for colors,
furnishings, accessories, displays.
It is discovering the power
that flourishes in choosing
that graces the act and shows
the face peering into the occasional mirror
delineaments it has not seen til now

Finding a home is not finding
A space for possessions, for sofas, beds,
armoires and stoves.
It is to unleash the raw beauty
of the soul reborn in possessing
in having risked belonging
to stone and stucco,
wood and glass, steel and concrete,
whose nature, henceforth
becomes one with oneself,
caring as it is cared for,
possessing as it is possessed,
and blessing as it blesses.

Poetry: "Finding a Home" by Oswald LeWinter (Rilke Prize winner, 1997).
© 2006 - all rights reserved.

Art: "Finding a Home" by Wendie Busig-kohn.
© 2012 - all rights reserved.

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Back in 2011, The Artist In You challenged folks to post their Art and engaged Poets from around the world to 'mash up' their words of art to translate how each work made them feel! Synergy of thought and creative process engaged hundreds of thousands to view, like and participate. 'The Ultimate Collection' (working title) Art and Poetry book series mission was born! Have you seen the video yet?

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