Finding Home

Memoir poem

Finding Home

Parked beneath the wash of shade
our parents envisioning a place
they might plant themselves, kneel
call home, the four of us waiting
under the arch of ancient oak,
sheltering this stretch of road
Clairemont Avenue main
Route to downtown
Decatur, 1948.

I was not yet six, my sister
Carol turning four next week
Intense negotiations
For who would hold the doll
Who only fold the clothes

We didn't care what the pair
up front thought they sought
though they found it there
that Sunday morning, observing
church folk ambling in between
the high reach of white columns
some organ inside pumping
filling up the air, refrains
chiming repeatedly the hour
calling all out there come in, come
home, come home, sweet sanctuary.
Jane Penland Hoover
March 13, 2008