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Once I read in a book of myth
how some primitive tribes
blessed a new home with a burial
under the threshold, or beneath
the floor of the great room
where the clan would while
away their years, the little
whitening bones their totem,
their surety, their hostage to fortune.
I read of this in my book of myth
and thought to myself of the old house
with its stains, its ratty old carpets,
and my own small self sitting
silent on the crumbling stoop,
and I think yes, I was that child,
that hostage. My blameless former self.