HOME-AN EXILE’S LAMENT

Parson Amos Main stands in the middle of my home town

          I stand apart, an exile not by choice,                  but by my own making

In a city not my home, try however I might to make it so.

Twenty years gone, never a chance for a proper goodbye, no time

To adjust to somewhere foreign that just won’t settle in me.

Home has to be wherever you are. So I’m told, but I wonder: where     

Is the feeling of being where I belong, instead of where I must be?

The poet says you can never go home. What does he know of longing,

Of place, of familiarity? Words are easy, living not so. The joy of

Returning for a few hours is soon replaced by the wrench of leaving.

  I’m told there is no longer any “there” left for me. Prodigals

Best stay away from the sting of memories, and so I eat the husks

Of bitter displacement. I exist feeling half alive, cut off, uprooted,

Learning to be content in whatever circumstance, hoping some day

I will see the good Parson’s outstretched hand welcoming me.

                                                                July 15, 2009