house – sethlewis.ie

An Elegy For Our Fireplace

When my father built a home for our family in the hills of Alabama he put a large wood stove in the very centre. A good fire in that stove could heat the entire house, upstairs and down, for most of the night. I grew up splitting logs and carrying them in, building fires and learning to finesse small sparks into roaring warmth. They say firewood warms you twice, and it’s true—first when you cut it, and again when you burn it. The sound of our fire sucking air through the stove vents like breath, the crackling wood, the reassuring smoke from the chimney as I headed in from the winter cold—all are essential pieces of my childhood, baked into my soul by the power of the flames.

Tree House (a poem)

Tomorrow, my wife Jessica and I celebrate twenty years of marriage. Two decades sounds like a lot to me, but—doesn’t everyone say this?—it seems like it’s gone quickly. When we first got married, I wrote a poem for Jessica about how our love was in Spring, and I didn’t know what seasons would come, but with God’s help we would keep growing through them all. Twenty years—and many different seasons—later we’ve made our home in this growing love. That’s what this poem is about:

The Reason For Windows

It’s a good thing I like my house. As Ireland’s third coronavirus lockdown drags on with no end in sight, we’re all getting used to being in our own spaces. One of the reasons I like my house is the windows, especially the ones in the back that let the sun stretch all the way across the floor whenever it takes a fancy. From those same windows, I can watch the songbirds gather at our bird feeder, and I can see the flowers bloom in our little garden. All of these things remind me that the world is bigger than the box I live in.