All homes are different but the same

A smile

A hug

Food

And shelter.

Sailors on the boundless ocean: ‘This is our home.”

A woman strokes the spindly tree where she was born: “This is my home”

A dispossessed man beats the dust where a new road slices ancient landscape: “This is my home”

Under tin roofs, thatch, or tile, people hope

For a smile

A hug

Food

And shelter.

Yellowing paper files or the clacking keys of computers keep records as flimsy as dreams,

A tent in the desert, a castle in Spain, "This is their home"

The high-rise honeycombs of modern caves, watching flickering shadows on paper-thin walls: “This is their home”

Astronauts stare in wonder at a blue orb suspended in space: “This is our home”

A building is no more than sticks and mud

With no one there to care

No one to say “This is our home”

Sure of a smile

A hug

Food

And shelter.

We are all renters under the stars.

We can claim “This is ours”

But we stay only a little while,

A day, a year, a lifetime.

Paying our dues to those before us,

Passing what we can to those who come after,

A smile

A hug

Food

And shelter.

So they can say, too, one day “This is our home”