Here

Do you ever wonder about where you really belong ? People often write about a place where they feel at home. It might be a summer place, a favorite lake, or their hometown. It might be their childhood town or the first home they bought themselves. I was giving a woman a tour of our place today and as I described the changes we have made and the way things have been added and taken away, I thought about this place I call home. Is it Here that I will always belong? Will I return to another place that was Here at a younger age? Is Here a physical place or something more?
Jane Kenyon's poem started knocking around in my head. Enjoy her words and images in the poem Here.

Here


You always belonged here.
You were theirs, certain as rock.
I'm the one who worries
if I fit in with the furniture
and the landscape.

But I "follow too much
the devices and desires of my own heart."

Already the curves of the road
are familiar to me, and the mountain
in all kinds of light,
treating all people the same.
And when I come over the hill,
I see the house, with its generous
and firm proportions, smoke
rising gaily from the chimney.

I feel my life start up again,
like a cutting when it grows
the first pale and tentative
root hair in a glass of water.

-Jane Kenyon
from Otherwise: New and Selected Poems

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