You think, you like to think
home is where you began;
but home is not always
at the beginning.
Sometimes
the journey home begins
in ummarked territory.
The familiar is just- that,
but it is not home. The
heart knows it, the blood knows it,
skin knows it.
Desole, desole –
Not knowing
you are homeless, not
understanding that stationary and
rooted is not the same thing. The
heart hunts a home, it stalks in
unsavoury places , attempts
ingratiation, will accept
stopping stages until
it makes it mark.
Home is not a hearth,
not a mother, nor a father, sister,
brother. It is sensate, innate, lacking the
cognition of recent evolutionary
progress. Home is prehistoric,
a reaction in the gut. You cannot
choose.
My words, William Hazlitts cosmography.
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moving in time 
Dear Anne, I pinned the image from today’s post to my Poetry Pinterest board with a link to your poem. Your works deserve a much larger audience. Your words suggest that either you are incredibly wise, or that you experienced something similar to my own life story, or both. Regardless, thank you for setting down in such a poignantly exquisite manner what is like to grow up in an environment where nothing is certain, nothing feels safe. I did not find my my home until I met my future husband on a blind date on April 1, 1978, when I had just turned 24. I’m not sure if April 1 is known as April Fools Day in the UK, as it is here. It certainly was not planned, but in retrospect, my husband and I still enjoy joking about who is the greater fool. Nonetheless, I knew as soon as I laid my eyes on him that this man was the one for me, and by the end of the evening, I knew I had found my home at last. Thank you, thank you, thank you! Janet P.S. I have copied your poem, “Home”, below for my dear husband, J.C.
You think, you like to think home is where you began; but home is not always at the beginning. Sometimes the journey home begins in unmarked territory. The familiar is just that, but it is not home. The heart knows it, the blood knows it, skin knows it. Desole, desole – Not knowing you are homeless, not understanding that stationary and rooted is not the same thing. The heart hunts a home, it stalks in unsavoury places , attempts ingratiation, will accept stopping stages until it makes it mark. Home is not a hearth, not a mother, nor a father, sister, brother. It is sensate, innate, lacking the cognition of recent evolutionary progress. Home is prehistoric, a reaction in the gut. You cannot choose.
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Thank you Janet, kind words! I always think of Plato’s advice, particularly during periods of stress, ‘Be Kind, Everyone is fighting a hard battle’. Best wishes to you and your husband. I didn’t meet mine until I was 40, and it was a homecoming!
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A great reminder that I only truly feel at home when I carry home within me. Or, as the boy in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close said, ““I shook my tambourine the whole time, because it helped me remember that even though I was going through different neighborhoods, I was still me.”
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love that!!
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I haven’t been much alive on the net lately, am just now feeling resettled in my Cincinnati home, but pardon the expression, for you feel, in this poem, that we never know where home is or if there is any such thing. Maybe that’s right. I suppose for most people it’s a beautiful word — home, even if we don’t know where home is for us. Still, we think of the Syrians today, and may realize that to be totally displaced from all we know might lend a new depth to this term, and it might not seem like such an empty concept. But it’s a confusing subject, I agree — as your poem seems to be saying to us.
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Hi Martha, Thanks for your thoughtful reading and response. Home is something I think is a primeval need in all of us, but sometimes the family we are born into does not fill that need. I found my home much later in life, first in the birth of my children, and then in my meeting my second husband. Suddenly life opens out with possibility, breathing becomes easier, the weight of being lightens. That to me is home.
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