Room

In your Father’s house you’ve made us room—
So you have pledged, and so we’ve longed for entrance.
But practiced as we are now staying home,
That end seems less a hope and more a sentence.

What’s this? A single place in which to dwell?
A few months’ house arrest and we are restless;
Eternity at home makes heaven hell,
Asphyxiates, constricts, and leaves us breathless.

And yet, the psalmist says, the boundary lines
Have fallen for him in most pleasant places;
The straight and narrow way never confines
But leads, you say, to green and open spaces.

So shall we find your house as else retracts,
A world that only grows as it contracts.