Home And Away Poem by Jim Coleman

After living many years abroad
it's good to come back home to grow old
and make friends who were shaped in that same mould
into which you were, decades ago, poured;
whose ways and thoughts do not need to be explored
as unknown territory. Jokes can be told
without long explanations, and our lives unfold
together, mainly at the tennis court.
.
Abroad, the game is played by other rules,
by people who were brought up differently.
They can't read your accent, class or school,
so you can be the person that you want to be,
but you can't see when you are being ridiculed
for breaking rules in your host community.