What is Home?
I ask and roam.
For all roads
lead away
from
Jerusalem.

What Is home?
I ask and roam.

My pillow on which I sleep
at the end of day
and dawn and night.
My father’s smell of sweat.
The grave,
the final destination.
The river Tyne.
My mother’s embrace.
Two passports and identity crises.

What is home?
I ask and roam.

Anything I am banished from,
anything I leave behind
my brothers’ laughter
words and things
signifiers and signified
shuttling between languages.

What is home?
My cat’s meowing.
Writing.

An old picture on a wall
the freckles on her body
and a mole
the smell of sage and thyme
Unforced couplets to rhyme
my aunt’s lentil soup
A raining May in York
The slow motion of time
The ticking of clock
Journeys of the mind.

What is home?
A hapless hope of return
Children on the run
A few men in the sun
an urging need to be
elsewhere.
Future possibilities.
Night walks
in Ramallah
My furnishing of a place
My dreaming of a space

What is home?
Chalks on a green board
in Irbid
The sharp taste of mulled wine
in Hamburg
The barking of my uncle’s donkey
in Salfit

O’ wherever you are is home.
Stand high enough
And see
The outstanding dome
Behind the drowning sea

For they say,
all roads lead to Rome,
a thousand roads
lead men
Forever
to Miliarium Aureum.
Yet not Jerusalem.

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Editor: Travis May

Photo: Wiki Commons