How to Be at Home

Find five minutes.

Five minutes absent of people and pets and pending responsibilities.

Five minutes to listen and watch this.

A poem.

An extraordinary poem read by the poet, Tanya Davis, and brilliantly animated by Andrea Dorfman. A poem perfect for our day and age. Perfect for this very hour and this very minute.

Don’t be stupid. Sit and watch and listen when the moment is right.

But a warning:

If you’re like me, you will need to also find future five minutes, too, because listening to this poem just once would be lunacy. I have listened to it nine times, and honestly, truthfully, wholeheartedly, it has gotten better every time. I’ve discovered corners of the poem previously unseen. Found phrases and stanzas that are simply divine. Fallen in love with moments of joyful imagery. Felt better and fuller and happier after every listening.

I expect to listen to this poem at least nine more times. Maybe many, many more.

Two stanzas that I have already written down to preserve forever… Actually, I don’t want to ruin it for you. Listen first. Find them below the video.

Oh, and if you’re sensitive to certain bits of the English language, forgive the one swear at the top of the poem. Do not discount this bit of beauty for a poet’s singular choice of vocabulary. There is a time and a place for those words, and this is one of them.

I’m so jealous of you. You still get to listen and watch for the first time. It really does get better each time, but that first time was pretty great, too.

 

But death is a truth
we all hate to know
We all get to live
and then we all have to go.

If touch was a tether that held you together
and now that it’s severed, you’re fragile, too,
lean into loneliness and know you’re not alone in it
Lean into loneliness like it is holding you.