Place Where You Live:

Corning, New York

The place where I live is between the earth and the sky, between the dry Boulder rocks and the McCormick spice smell over Baltimore’s inner harbor.  We were birthed in the shadow of mountains, toddled to the dust fields of Oklahoma, and flown into Baltimore City.  The pace where I live is between here and there, now and not yet.  Bloom where I’m planted, plant what I can.  As a child staying in the face of going was never an option.  As an adult the place where I live becomes the ground my feet stand on, sunshine or shade.

            The place where I live has my children’s pictures on the wall and the weaving wagging of my pets around my feet.  Memories make the place I stand the place I live.  The walls invite my grandparents, babies birthed from my body, a twin lost to my touch.  The walls hold the spaces and places I live~ temporary beach places, wave rolling life giving places. 

            Transient by birthright, mobile by career there is no one place, no owned place, no same place where I live.  The falling streams in the Grand Tetons, the waves on Ocracoke Island that push up against the spiny thorned dunes and beaches, the oysters and blue crabs pulled from Back Creek off Solomons Island, these are the places where I live.  Yesterday the crush of downtown Manila, tomorrow the poverty of Kamina.  I live where I stand, where I move, where I lie down at night. 

            The place where I live is where my husband lies beside me and my dog lies at my feet.  This is the place where my roots sink into the black fertile earth of compost, rain and rounded river rocks.  It is this place where we honor the creator of all life, honor any who come to our door.  The gradual wakening of day or the skybluepink of evening may be miles or days apart, but this, this is the place where I live.