My classmate Michael
would chide when I said
I was going home (to visit
my parents): “This is your home.”
He meant the brothers.  

Over the years I’ve tried
to agree but now I have two
homes: This cloister full of
frescoes and flowers, ancient
house of studies where stern
Luke Wadding’s eyes follow me,
questioning—  

and the place by the mountains
I hope to see tonight under stars–

but then more:
the old yard in the pueblo
where Charles and I
sat smoking cigars;
or the Disneyland in DC
where the Holy Land replicas
beckon me still,
and Simon and I laugh at his joke
about FDR and Eleanor;
or the church they shuttered yesterday
in the city of my birth, across
from Dad’s store where I donned
the small apron on Saturdays
and swept the sawdust
by the meat counter—  

oh we have so many homes,
and no homes here.
Thus faith in
grace that leads me home.