First, I want to thank everyone who wrote for last week's challenge. While I did not have access the internet while I was away, my smartphone and your poems kept me going. A few of these poems even had me laughing in the face of airline delays and bumpy plane rides. So again, I thank you! Please check out the poems written for the topic On the Road.
I went home last week, but it really isn't home anymore. It happens to be where I grew up. It's where my mother still lives. On the flight back to Richmond I realized that more than half my life now has been spent somewhere outside of the place I still call home. When people ask where I'm from, I still think New York, not Virginia. That response always makes me wonder how people define home. Can you have two homes, not the brick and mortar type, but homes of the heart?
Maybe our poems this week can answer that question. Let's write about home. Leave me a note about your poem and I'll share the results in time for Poetry Friday.
An ancient postcard
ReplyDeleteshows a place I'll never see,
which I now call home.
Madeleine Begun Kane
Revision of a poem written for a UCLA-Ext. class...
ReplyDeleteFinding North
What happened to the
language of the
north?
To all the secret places—
the clocks, the mice,
the rabbit moon,
the milky breath
of morning?
To apples baking,
hotcakes rising,
the buttery, sugary
spicy taste of dawn?
Show me, tell me,
take me there—
to sleeping gardens,
creeping vines,
to lilac scents
of summer.
To skies of pink
and blue and red,
to woolen socks
and mistletoe,
to gingerbread and tea—
to falling snow and
Jack Frost etching
patterns
on the glass.
© jgk, 2008
http://www.facebook.com/juliekrantzbooks
CHILDHOOD ABODE
ReplyDeleteQuiet engulfs a skeleton
of what was once our thriving home.
Weeds stretch through the sidewalk
where I learned to ride my bike.
Vats of brown sod replace lush green pasture
that I use to cut every Saturday.
Shattered walls displace beige colored barriers where I frantically wrote my thoughts after my baby sister died.
Decayed floors stand in for smooth, pea green linoleum
that I skated in my socks much to Mom's annoyance.
Rusty sink substitutes a stainless steel basin
where Dad taught me how to shave and tie a tie.
Faded couch takes the place of a plush ottoman
where I fell asleep on Grandpa's lap every Christmas.
What nature and neglect can't ever take away
are the memories of your childhood abode.
(c) Charles Waters 2012 all rights reserved.
"What nature and neglect can't ever take away
Deleteare the memories of your childhood abode."
So true, Charles. I enjoyed sharing in your memories. Julie
Very kind of you to write that Julie. Many thanks!
DeleteIn My Daughter's Early Drawings
ReplyDeleteWe live in a square
topped by a triangle.
There is sometimes
a rhombus of a door
that no one opens
and smaller squares
of windows either side.
This is home to her.
To Mommy and to me.
Often our black cat
Desdemona figures in
her triple-circle body,
twin ice cream cones
for ears, trailing tail
like a backwards S,
on our green rectangle
grass, our blue and
trapezoidal sky.
(c) Steven Withrow 2012, all rights reserved
Love this!
DeleteWITHROW POWER!
DeleteI really like your poem, Steve! It exists on so many levels for me and the teacher in me wants to seize it and use it to help kids with geometry terms. I think you are on to something with that btw. However, it speaks to me about love and the golden moments of childhood and our sort of similar roots in that triangle-roofed house we all lived in once upon a time. Janet F.
DeleteOh, lovely. Love the last phrase especially... our blue and trapezoidal sky.
ReplyDeleteMoving
ReplyDelete“You’ll like it there,” Mom says.
“Your room will be bigger
and we’ve painted it yellow.”
“Bright yellow?” I ask, “Bright
like the sun?” She shakes her head.
“Soft yellow, like butter. Here,
put this in the box.” I stick the cookbooks
in the box. “What about the kitchen?”
“Just white, but it has a nice window.”
I go look in our kitchen. I think
the window is really nice. It shows
three bushes in a row and the house
next door with a dog that yaps
like he’s crazy. I’ll miss that dog,
and the dumb little kid down the street.
I’ll miss the porch, and the way my bed
shows me a streetlight if I slide down a little.
It makes me think of Narnia
and Lucy going out in the snow.
I’ll miss Jamie the most, the way
she used to come over and talk, silly
and not silly. Boxes cover the floor.
I picture a new yellow room filling up
with my things like water in a cup,
my dresser pouring in with the jewel box
on top my dad gave me last Christmas,
my clothes filling drawers, everything filling
the new house. Maybe someday
I will like it there. But not yet.
“Jamie’s here!” my mom calls. Today
my home is right here. “Coming!”
--Kate Coombs 2012,
all rights reserved
This is a revision of one of my older poems...
ReplyDeleteFinding North
What happened to the
language of the
north?
To all the secret places—
the clocks, the mice,
the rabbit moon,
the milky breath
of morning?
To apples baking,
hotcakes rising,
the buttery, sugary
spicy taste of dawn?
Show me, tell me,
take me there—
to sleeping gardens,
creeping vines,
to lilac scents
of summer.
To skies of pink
and blue and red,
to woolen socks
and mistletoe,
to gingerbread and tea—
to falling snow and
Jack Frost etching
patterns
on the glass.
© jgk, 2008
http://www.facebook.com/juliekrantzbooks
Here's a tanka about when that childhood home isn't safe and homey. . . .
ReplyDeletethose warm rectangles
of soft-curtained light . . .
fled to the streets
I used to wonder what secrets
other houses held
c 2012 by Hannah Mahoney
This is a revision of one of my older poems...
ReplyDeleteFinding North
What happened to the
language of the
north?
To all the secret places—
the clocks, the mice,
the rabbit moon,
the milky breath
of morning?
To apples baking,
hotcakes rising,
the buttery, sugary
spicy taste of dawn?
Show me, tell me,
take me there—
to sleeping gardens,
creeping vines,
to lilac scents
of summer.
To skies of pink
and blue and red,
to woolen socks
and mistletoe,
to gingerbread and tea—
to falling snow and
Jack Frost etching
patterns
on the glass.
© jgk, 2008
http://www.facebook.com/juliekrantzbooks
Finding North
ReplyDeleteWhat happened to the
language of the
north?
To all the secret places—
the clocks, the mice,
the rabbit moon,
the milky breath
of morning?
To apples baking,
hotcakes rising,
the buttery, sugary
spicy taste of dawn?
Show me, tell me,
take me there—
to sleeping gardens,
creeping vines,
to lilac scents
of summer.
To skies of pink
and blue and red,
to woolen socks
and mistletoe,
to gingerbread and tea—
to falling snow and
Jack Frost etching
patterns
on the glass.
© jgk, 2008
http://www.facebook.com/juliekrantzbooks
Julie, I love all the sensory details in this, and the song-like lyricism. Lovely.
DeleteThese are lovely, and all different. What a rich topic. Here's mine, with inspiration from Naomi Shihab Nye's poem, Kindness.
ReplyDeleteHOME
Before you know what home really is
you must leave, feel its cool shade thinning
as you drive away. You must spend Sundays
on another couch, catless, no gentle quilt nearby,
no dim room with a narrow bed that knows
your form. Before you learn the density of home,
you must sit alone with your pizza, remembering
neighbors' front yard games, boys who shrugged
off boundaries, driveway and hedge, tall windows
framing them like curled photos in an album
handed down. You must smell the garlic air,
how it lingered days after the soup was gone
from the chipped white stove, know again
the damp porch step where you heard the moon
whisper, This world is larger than your questions.
You must hum the creak of the faded red door
as you enter another place, empty,
crave the embrace, call Hello?
again, feel it calling you
home.
© 2012 Stephanie Parsley
(with nods to Naomi Shihab Nye)
My poem this week is a prefix poem.
ReplyDeleteHome
-town
Just a dot
on the map
I once said I lived
upstate
but that means
something different
in the five boroughs
so now I claim
western NY
as mine
-grown
Like summer corn
I grew straight
and tall here
wandering fields
catching snakes and fireflies
loving the freedom of pedaling
fast and rolling away from
newly fertilized fields
-sick
Nineteen years
in the south
and I’m still a
puzzle missing pieces
-coming
Mom still waits
for me
I’ve worn the roads
from here to there
and back again
wondering
how much time we have
before these trips will end
-less
One day there will be
no one there to
welcome me
Oh, so sad! But the images are so clear and endearing. Favorite stanza -sick
DeleteReally like this, Tricia, and the whole idea of a 'prefix' poem.
DeleteI can so relate to this poem, having grown up in the same region and now living far away.
DeleteThank you for sharing.
I REALLY like your poem, Tricia. I travel the same route. CNY to Long Island. Think I know every inch of it after 42 years and have that same wonder as you at the end. I still say I am going home....though it really is not.Janet F.
DeleteSigned Out with Daughter
ReplyDeleteHe spoons coconut ice cream into his mouth,
thin folds of skin pleat the back of his arms.
He drinks blue air into hardening lungs,
tells me of the girl he wishes he’d married,
the one that got away in his old home town
that has shriveled and died. Not even a place to buy a Coke.
He doesn’t want to go back
to the two rooms, the recliner,
his bed, the pictures on the wall
that claim intimacy in that unfamiliar place.
He has surrendered all—his wife
in another home, his tools idle, his keys.
Freedom is ice cream at a sidewalk parlor,
the walker shoved into a corner, the tank
of oxygen slung across the wrought iron chair.
“Take me by the house,” he says. “For a while.”
I drop him off, leave him to breathe the stale air.
He just wants to say he went home.
This is lovely, Doraine.
DeleteHow touching! This really resonates with me.
DeleteI used this prompt to inspire my haiku, published on my blog for Friday Poetry with a photo of my porch swing:
ReplyDeletetoys lined up by,
his empty laundry basket -
a motionless swing
Andromeda Jazmon
Sorry I seem to be feeling sad about home these days. Sigh.
These are all wonderful! Wow!
ReplyDelete