Home

It's high time I mentioned why the book I've written is called 'Always home'. It's the title of one of the poems, and in a way, not in a blatant way, but in a deep undercurrent, a running theme across most of them.

Home is... but first, before I finish the sentence...

Imagine home is somewhere else.

Just pick a place, any place,

a place you know, a place you love.

Imagine which corner you'd sleep in.

Imagine the rhythms, imagine the views.

What does the world look like?

Home is... this is how other people have finished the sentence:

• ... being surrounded by tall trees.
• ... the one heart.
• ... stone.
• ... eucalyptus, Pacific, chaparral, hawk, coyote, heat, hills, sand.
• ... apple pie and Sunday supper.
• ... roses, garden, blue iris, wicker, porch, swing, copperhead.
• ... lakes, streams, pine trees, birch, oak, maples, iris, dogs and cats, kids and old people, gram's cookies and fried cakes, morning coffee, my Mom's hands.
• ... music, books, words themselves.
• ... where Blackbean and the Silky Oak, Red Cedar and the Kauri pine, Cathedral fig and Quondon trees have grown as long as ‘Old man time’.

There are as many different homes as there are people, and just about any place, even a simple feeling or idea, could be home for somebody.

And at the same time, we all know what home feels like, and that every home feels like home. That's why we say 'I'm going home' rather than 'I'm going to my home.' This isn't a quirk of the English language, in Spanish you say 'Voy a casa', in German 'Ich gehe nach Hause', in Czech 'Jedu domu'. In most languages, 'home' isn't 'my home' or 'the home', it's just 'home'.

At this point, you could start asking strange questions like: What's this thing called home, that seems to be everywhere but not anywhere, that everybody has but no one can claim ownership of it, that's the same for everyone but different for everyone? And if you ask strange questions, you risk getting strange answers.

You are always everywhere

you are.

You are home.