Poems R Us - The Second Wave

I've been feeling a little bit homesick lately in a very non-specific, not exactly sure what I want, kind of way. (Having said that, this evening which consisted of turning up to WARGS, concluding that nobody really wanted to play board games that much and repairing to a cafe for a chat helped a lot.)

My beta reader has pointed out that most people will not get some of the references in this poem, to which I say “Suffer”. You don’t have to read it if you don’t want to.

On Feeling Homesick,
I Pause To Reflect That Going Backwards Can,
At Times, Be Difficult.
In my life there was no flood,
no fire, no grand catastrophe.
There are no disaster pictures
of the demolished ruins of my home.

Instead, it sliced itself away
in pieces.
There is no place for me now
in that house where I was born.
Or the next, where a charred grapevine
clung grimly to the wall, nor even
that house where from the garden
I ripped stubborn roots
in the grey winter that my father died.

My life moves on, it moves on,
and fickle time will go forward,
despite the best of intentions,
and manners.

What is left to me now
is the walk home
down a cool hill side
and the shy smile of Mr Patel,
the man at the dairy.

-- Stephanie Pegg, October 2005.