Going Home Poem by Leonard Dabydeen

Posted: July 12,2010,12: 44 am



Going home
is what everyone
seems to be looking forward
to do
it does not matter
if night catches day
or day catches night
or shadows snoop around
rugged bends on the road.


Sometimes the road is rough
and feels as if tightening your belt
should have started
a long, long time ago
on the hour when you yelled
as someone kept you
upside down
and you felt a slap
on your naked behind.


And sometimes the road
is like cool breeze
riding with waves
of the illusive Atlantic
or like wooing echoes
of the unconquered Pacific
swirling memories
of Sir Francis Drake
having a jug of red wine
on the Plymouth
or Christopher Columbus
sea-bound in the Pinta,
landing on my shore
gathering pebbles of the West Indies
eyeballing Caribs and Arawaks
canoeing in blue seas
with bows and arrows
like weapons of mass destruction
or like Sir Walter Raleigh
vexing at trekking over
river beds in the Amazon jungle
and looking at every shining stone
as a fragment of a lost city of gold.


Someday it will come to an end
I know the distance
is near and far
or short and long
my soul tells me this
from the knapsack in my mind
as I am going home.