Dreamhome by Jonathon Penny

I wish I had a home—
No, not my own—
A place I’d shared with others
All the summers of my life
Or all the winters.

But, as it stands, the candidates
Are fallen into disrepair
(False friends!), or usurped by
Some false, pretending owner
(Who would, her eyes askance,
Refuse me ingress or relief),
Or scattered as the family bones.

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Fern Hill Revisited by Jonathon Penny

Time held me green and dying, though I sang,
And spun me off the whinnied fields and out of praise
In his big harvest hands €˜til horse and hen and place
Were only memory, then myth, then vacant space
Implacable as Time’s own clockwork face.
And my worn trap-spring sprang,

And I, Time’s time-mocked minion,
Found Death had no dominion after all,
And all was Eden, more than Eden €”
A Heaven pastoral, as earthy as that dell,
As chatty as those ricks, borne as the very farm
Grown green and golden about Fern Hill.