It's winter. There's a lot of it. Ever since I was a little kid, walking home from the bus stop, I've had this fascination with walking on ice—especially when it cracks underneath you. There's something so simple and childish about it. It reminds me of home. Lately I've been reconnecting with that feeling. I'm fixed on the concept of "home." It's a hard thing for me to wrap my mind around; I have this strong sense of it being a very real, tangible thing, however at the same time, it's almost impossible for me to really wrap my mind around it. As such, much of my poetry deals with "home," and with childhood and memories.
This is one of those, but it's also something more. It's the realization that home is still attainable in some form after childhood has passed.
Walking Home
I
As winter melts away,
Little ice ledges overhang
The borders of paved
Walks from Lewis
To the Hill.
I don’t know why—
The path is wide
(And for the most part,
Unoccupied)—
But I stay to the side
And let my sneaker drop
Naturally over the fragile
Glassy surface until all
My world—direction,
Thought, desire—
Is reduced to pure crunching,
The satisfying snap underfoot
That breathes in cracks, “it’s okay
For things to break.”
So like a fading dream
Upon awakening,
I chase it:
A truth,
Half-known
(If that)
Until somehow
In my mind
It’s found again
And I am home—
I know
And I am known.
II
We lived on Battis Road
And could declare “home”
Without a moment lost
To wistful thoughts.
Here, I used to cry
On the living room floor
Begging never to grow up,
Never work, bleed, or die.
Then, older, I would wander
The four house-lengths
Back from the bus,
Famished for excitement.
Drainage water formed a brook—
Frozen in the early months—
And here I first learned
Of that raw and simple catharsis.
So like a pioneer
(Of sorts, I imagined)
I braved it
Stomping,
Falling through,
Soaking wet;
Warmly cold
And alive,
Crackling
My way home—
Where I know
And I am known.
III
There’s comfort in the collapse
And order in the entropy;
A sound and a feeling that ring
In my bones like the dim voices
Of dear old friends.
It struck me like a falling sole
On my way to meet you up the Hill:
The destination binds it all,
It makes every crushed crystal
Sing one crisp but subtle song;
Whether small boy or grown man,
The melody remains.
Footsteps keep cadence
And the improvised adventure hums:
Vital and young
And heading home.
Heading home:
To know
And to be known.
IV
The destination binds it all
To one singular sensation.
And this is my terminus:
Where I find rest
And lay things out to dry,
Where comfort can be
Free to flourish,
Where at least
Something is sure
To be in order,
To feel planned,
To seem right;
This common end
Is my home:
There I know
And I am known.
