Vistas & Byways - Spring 2022
  • CONTENTS
    • IN THIS ISSUE
    • Fiction
    • Nonfiction
    • Poetry
    • Bay Area Stew
    • Inside OLLI
    • Photo Essays
  • ABOUT US
  • CONTRIBUTORS
  • SUBMISSIONS
  • ARCHIVES
    • Fall 2021
    • Spring 2021
    • Fall 2020
    • Spring 2020
    • Fall 2019
    • Spring 2019
    • Fall 2018
    • Spring 2018
    • Fall 2017
    • Spring 2016
    • Fall 2015

​POETRY 

It is the kitchen with cooking smells    -    Weebly.com                                    

A House Stays a Home
by Vivian Imperiale

​You are gone
but the house remains.
It is not yours anymore
yet it is forever yours.
Your breath contained in the narrow hallway,
the imprint of your fingers on the doorknobs.
 
A building is more than a building.
It is a pulsating collection of
stored laughter, regretted shouts
and room-filled exhilaration.
 
It is the now concave centers
of the wooden stairs from
generations of climbing feet.
It is the bedroom
that used to be a den.
It is the den
that used to be a bedroom.
 
It is the living room
with the once coveted working fireplace
that now sits idle
so as not to pollute the air
with smoke from glowing flames.

​It is the kitchen
with cooking smells permeating the walls,
the bathroom with fixtures
that were once modern
and now are quaint
or, insultingly, outdated.
 
The stuck window that maybe is worth
having fixed,
the creaking floorboard that scared the puppy,
the stain on the otherwise perfect dining room floor
from before he learned to wait to go outside.
 
A house is more than us.
It is the accumulation
of all the living within its walls,
the history of everyone there combined,
leading us to say, without knowing why,
“This house has character.”

Vertical Divider
Picture
​​Since age six, Vivian Imperiale has been writing poetry to identify and process her emotions about the world around her. She soon learned that her poems could be meaningful to others. A friend touched her with these words, "You gave me words for an emotion I didn't even know I needed to express."
Other pieces in this Issue:  
Poetry:
The Colors of War
Moments of My Past
​My Poem Delayed
Vertical Divider
Vertical Divider

    WE WELCOME COMMENTS

Submit
Fiction
Bay Area Stew
Nonfiction
Inside OLLI
POETRY
Photo Essays
Picture
Vistas & Byways Review is the semiannual journal of fiction, nonfiction and poetry by members of Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) at San Francisco State University​.​
Picture
Vertical Divider
​Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at San Francisco State University (OLLI at SF State) provides communal and material support to theVistas & Byways  ​volunteer staff.

Contact the V&B
  • CONTENTS
    • IN THIS ISSUE
    • Fiction
    • Nonfiction
    • Poetry
    • Bay Area Stew
    • Inside OLLI
    • Photo Essays
  • ABOUT US
  • CONTRIBUTORS
  • SUBMISSIONS
  • ARCHIVES
    • Fall 2021
    • Spring 2021
    • Fall 2020
    • Spring 2020
    • Fall 2019
    • Spring 2019
    • Fall 2018
    • Spring 2018
    • Fall 2017
    • Spring 2016
    • Fall 2015