I am rooted in the earth there
growing from the soil.
It’s in my blood
my roots are there
and do not move,
while my heart and mind
wanders from beach to cliff,
craving salt water
wherever I go.
I am rooted in the earth there
growing from the soil.
It’s in my blood
my roots are there
and do not move,
while my heart and mind
wanders from beach to cliff,
craving salt water
wherever I go.
The Freshwater co-op car park
is a long way from home.
Everything is these days –
home is a distant thing,
a concept I can’t wrap
my head round, no matter how hard I try.
Every rolling field, combine rumbling
by, every hay bale and tractor
every pebble on the beach
is a postcard from home
that I can’t ignore.
An old tattered paperback,
words jumping off the page
familiar characters and faces on the screen
are like a blanket wrapping
themselves around me, linking me
back to home, an unwritten
postcard that doesn’t need
to be spoken aloud.
They returned to the site,
still the same after all these years.
No one else would know they were pilgrims
for they wore tatty shorts and t-shirts, clutched
backpacks and sun hats,
and looked like any other tourist
that passed through. But for them
it was something else – this pilgrimage
that they had made, back, into the past,
a time that had long passed
even if the place still remained
seemingly untouched.
We’re homesick you see,
not to go home, not now,
but for a time
that doesn’t exist anymore
that we can’t go back to
except in our dreams
which take us far away
on a roller coaster into the past.
we cling on like limpets
on a sinking ship, we spin
in circles
getting
nowhere
and feeling nothing
only
despair
dragging us further away
and all I really want,
you see, is to go home,
but it’s not there anymore.