Unhoused — Summary

no home where I find my home

and a well of ice

Learn Poems app

Try the Learn Poems app

Everything from the website trainer, and more: new exercises, voice recording and sharing, reminders, quick review.

Two short stanzas, and a lot of unease packed into them. The title, "Unhoused," sets the tone: the speaker has no shelter, or at least no settled place to belong. The first lines twist that idea into a paradox. There is "no home where / I find my home." Read one way, the speaker can only feel at home in places that aren't really homes, somewhere unconventional or unstable. Read another way, wherever they look for a home, they find nothing there. The line break after "where" makes the sentence hang for a moment, as if the speaker is searching.

Then comes the sudden, cold image: "a well / of ice." A well usually promises water, life, something to draw up and drink. Here it is frozen, so what should nourish is locked away. The mood is bleak and hollow, but also very quiet. The poem doesn't complain or explain. It leaves us with the feeling of reaching for comfort and finding it out of reach, which makes the loneliness feel all the sharper.

Read also

More by Dave Bonta

All poems
ContemplativeDave Bonta

Plea bargain

I hear half a beat of drum to serve time have half a hope in the meantime praise God
DreamyDave Bonta

Cibola 3

I awake in the dark and shake free of sheets & blankets, of down-filled quilt. The rituals of waking– the long, hot shower, the coffee–give
ContemplativeDave Bonta

In good light

On a maple’s pale bark, a zigzag ladder—old tooth-marks from a wandering snail? Green islands of moss