A while back, my poet friend, Alison, suggested the following tagline for poem RENOVATION:
“Sounds like home.”
Yes, “poem” sounds like home. And “home” is a word you’d expect to find paired with “renovation.” But I couldn’t see how that tagline connected with the daily word challenge I had created.
That’s changed since I saw poem RENOVATION in action in Ohio’s United Church Homes continuing care communities.
“Sounds like home” began to resonate when Tami looked up, amazed, as she watched her mom, Joyce, unexpectedly piece together words that had things in common. It was as if those little squares of paper, each with a single word on them, gave her back part of her mom, as if those pieced-together poem RENOVATION words led them both back home.
Then I watched Betty, also working with a cut-out version of that day’s poem RENOVATION passage, single out the word “forest.” “I love to walk in the forest, meditate in the forest,” she said. The woman next to her joined in with her own thoughts about feeling at home in the woods.
And then there was husband and wife, Gary and Opal, working companionably to create meaning from the pile of words on the table in front of them. He gently encouraged her. She lined up nouns, verbs and adjectives to their mutual liking. It was easy to envision how they worked together over the years to build a home.
Words have the power to transport us. I saw them work that magic for United Church Homes’ community members. It made me realize that poem RENOVATION really does sound like home. And perhaps the simple act of rule-free wordplay it provides can also, on some level, lead us home.