Build (A Poem)

find yourself
a country, find yourself a house
to grow your trees around, to shade
from summer heat and showers, to keep
cool and still;

then grow
your flowers and gardens, nurse their seeds
until to your horizons stretch
your colors, your fruits, and pick them
gently, into vases and bowls,
enjoy what you've mothered
while you can;

then fill
your house, build it again from the inside
out, blossoming with the tables you built
from your trees (you choose what goes on them),
the chairs you made with your hands (who sits in them),
the air you've breathed from the flowers you picked
and tended (what is spoken, what is sung), fill your house
with family, and yourself, keep the windows open and fill it
with the breeze and the rain, heat and frost,
take it all, fill
yourself,

the sky, the seas,
silence and noise, color and darkness, your lover
in bed, naked and soft, your lost ones buried beneath
dirt and time;

open your eyes; find
yourself a world;
make you a home

-- Matthew Stalbaum, 8/24/11
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This is my most recent poem, and probably one of my favorites among the recent ones I've been writing. Which isn't to say it's perfect. Reading over it again, it could possibly use more of something, though what and where I'm not sure yet. Qualms aside, I like this one because it starts off simple and concrete, and builds to something more abstract. I'm curious as to how people read the final stanza, if it comes off awkward or not. I worded it that way specifically with a certain intention in mind, but it is a bit of an obscure intention I fear. One thought is it needs more of a transition from the concrete to the abstract. But enough self-deprecation, it is what it is, and at the least it was a pleasure to write. Hopefully it's at least an interesting read too.