Home

Ravilious

Home

Night lifts the roofs

from houses, reaches in,

pushes chairs further

into corners, studies people

who do not move

from room to room.

Dreams return, spiders

back to thread the same webs

of sleep. The moist dust

of the carpenter's dream

clings to his shoes and skin.

The Tailor's dream

turns itself inside out

again and again.

The body shifts

in bed. The dream

dances in darkness.

The tongue slides in

the closed mouth

and no one is far from home.

Gregoire Turgeon

A strange poem, yet somehow familiar. It puzzles me. It feels like I've been here, as if I know this poem from the inside but the memory is just beyond reach.

Does night move us around like dolls in a dollhouse? Does it observe our behaviour and wonder why we act the way we do? 

And the dreams! Is night also recording those? Does night lift the roofs of our heads to see the dramas playing out inside?

"And no one is far from home." Hmmm. Are we at home in our houses, in our heads, in our dreams? Are we nested within these protective layers? Who or what is working upon us, and for what purpose?