Poem: Homesickness

Homesickness

That hashtag on social media,

#rosewednesday, on a post I see

Here, far away as I roam these foreign

Hillsides gives me a deep longing 

to be back home where people know me,

My family, my friends. I thought

Climbing a hill here would make it

Less apparent how homesick I am,

But it intensifies with each heartbeat

As my blood conspires against me,

Letting simple tasks I love like hiking,

Wear me out; making a contagion a severe

Enemy as my very blood gives up the fight,

Bursting vessels in my eye making me blind,

Clogging the arteries of my heart, 

That heart that so longs for home 

Instead of these distant bilberried hills.

Where are the evergreen forests

Covered in the undergrowth of huckleberries?

Now it’s a well labored picking of bilberries

With the ocean in the distance

Reminding me just how far away I am.

No matter how similar the hills, berries,

Trees, may be, my blood lets me

Grow sick and tired and the salty distant

Waves might as well be my tears

For it is likely here that I will find

My final rest—distant moors

Of my ancestors, also distant,

Too distant to even remember.

So here I am alone, resting in my tears

Longing for the evergreen forests of home.

July 2023

About This Poem:

This is a poem about being homesick. I wrote it from home, so it was somewhat fictionalized, but based in the realities of being homesick when I was abroad in England. I haven't been to England for 17 years and sometimes I get homesick for it as my second home. Medical history and events mentioned in the poem are real, but recent, so they didn't comprise any of my homesickness when I lived in England. I just put things together because, in the end, homesickness is just about missing something. All these things, poor health, wonderful similarities, or lack of similarities contribute to homesickness. Even a hospital stay where you live can create homesickness. The things in this poem are what have caused homesickness for me. The photo is at the ancient stone circle in Avebury, England. I have been there as a tourist and loved it, but another time I just felt alone there, even with my family. So it seems to illustrate homesickness well for me.