Poem: Home

I haven’t been keeping up with my blog lately. I guess that comes with taking the entire summer off. Getting back into the swing of things is hard.

Anyway, poetry is still dear to my heart, so I just had to share another one with you today. I borrowed the prompt from Julia Garcia at Drops of Inspira. This one explores the concept of home. What is home?

For an army brat, home isn’t necessarily one place. It’s not where my parents are from—I never lived there. It’s not the last place I lived because that would ignore all the others. It’s not even my favorite places because that would leave out all the others that made me who I am today.

Home is… well, I think I’ll let the poem explain.

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Home

 

she sits in the attic collecting dust
                                    and spiders
while my feet are itching without these callouses

how do people do it year after year?
watch the leaves turn
                                    and drop
to stare at the bare wood
that blossoms with green
rich, entrancing full of cicada song
only for the leaves to turn
                                        and drop again

all the world’s a clock—
the month striking twelve,
and I’m still here
strapping on my boots,
knotting the laces while the dog tries to eat them
stay
—she pants—
bleib*

but my heart is yearning to bound up the stairs two at a time
dust off the suitcase
and go

 

***

*bleib—German for “stay.” Since our German Shepherd, Pfeffer, I’ve been teaching our dogs German and English commands.

Let’s chat! What did you think of the poem? What makes home for you?

Similar poems: Blue, Pronunciation, and Homesick