Going Home to a Place You've Never Been

March 13, 2017

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is national identity, in honor of St. Patrick’s Day, which falls on March 17, and Purim, which fell on March 11 and 12.

Today’s poem is a St. Patrick’s Day poem about returning to the country your grandparents left three generations ago.

I welcome comments on my poems at http://nicholasgordon.blogspot.com.

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Going home to a place you’ve never been,

To long-loved landscapes that you’ve never seen,

To where your soul was sculpted by a wind

Your parents’ parents left still young behind.

How long do such ancestral memories last?

When, if ever, can the past be past?

You do not know, but only know right now

This place has gripped your heart like home somehow.

Your plane descends above green hills where once

Your people for millennia learned to dance

The dance you learned third hand, yet dancing still,

You land, weeping hard against your will.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at http://www.poemsforfree.com/goingh.html. For more St. Patrick’s Day poems, go to http://www.poemsforfree.com/stpatricksdaypoems.html .

This week’s theme: National Identity

March 13: Going Home to a Place You’ve Never Been