Hello Poetry
Submit your work and get some sparkles! Create free account
tomatkins1955Poems
Outside it is snowing, just a bit. Twelve years in and it still seems odd Vermont, cold and with its ethereal light feels more like home than the hills and mountains you spent your first 54 years immersed in. It seems odd that you were nearly sixty before rediscovering the ocean, Maine and Cape Cod, wild, often rugged, nothing like the sprawling sands where you were raised. And yet, it is these seas, not the seas of your first half century that calm your soul and raise it from it’s gloom. It seems odd that the place that sings its siren song, calls to you, makes you yearn like a lovesick boy, lies in a foreign land, with a foreign language, nothing familiar, nothing, and yet the first time you arrived, sitting in Saint Mark’s square, cappuccino in hand, the Adriatic light and salt water filling your senses you felt more at home than you have ever felt in your long fractured life. It seems odd, that you are so in love with a woman so different than the southern sirens that surrounded you most of your life. Darker. More direct. Challenging, yet gentle, Struggling strong, real. She enflames you. She calms you. She protects you. Even from yourself. You have never known a woman like her. And yet, in her arms, you feel that most unusual of things, safe. It seems odd that at this age, you look at the places you called home, and the places you feel home, that make your soul feel whole, complete, possible, and you question so much of the place and time and people who raised you. But only for a few moments before realizing home has never changed. Truth has never changed. You have.
0
Dec 28, 2020
Dec 28, 2020 at 10:33 AM UTC
A Change of Homes
Outside it is snowing, just a bit. Twelve years in and it still seems odd Vermont, cold and with its ethereal light feels more like home than the hills and mountains you spent your first 54 years immersed in. It seems odd that you were nearly sixty before rediscovering the ocean, Maine and Cape Cod, wild, often rugged, nothing like the sprawling sands where you were raised. And yet, it is these seas, not the seas of your first half century that calm your soul and raise it from it’s gloom. It seems odd that the place that sings its siren song, calls to you, makes you yearn like a lovesick boy, lies in a foreign land, with a foreign language, nothing familiar, nothing, and yet the first time you arrived, sitting in Saint Mark’s square, cappuccino in hand, the Adriatic light and salt water filling your senses you felt more at home than you have ever felt in your long fractured life. It seems odd, that you are so in love with a woman so different than the southern sirens that surrounded you most of your life. Darker. More direct. Challenging, yet gentle, Struggling strong, real. She enflames you. She calms you. She protects you. Even from yourself. You have never known a woman like her. And yet, in her arms, you feel that most unusual of things, safe. It seems odd that at this age, you look at the places you called home, and the places you feel home, that make your soul feel whole, complete, possible, and you question so much of the place and time and people who raised you. But only for a few moments before realizing home has never changed. Truth has never changed. You have.
I often spend a lot of the week between Christmas and New Year's reflecting. These thoughts arose after looking at pictures from a few years back to use with this poem for my blog. One showed up from Venice and the poem fairly spilled out.
#home#safety#love#venice
tomatkins1955
Written by
tomatkins1955
Dec 28, 2020
Dec 28, 2020 at 10:33 AM UTC
Request permission to use this poem