Ruminations of a Homesick Poet

I

brain-dump my feelings

and my thoughts

and my worries

onto this page of white. somewhere,

someone, somehow,

has managed to create that

same recognizable sadness in me

that I once felt 

(was it a decade and a half ago?)

when I left one country for another,

leaving all my close friends,

that same gasp of sadness

that I felt on the plane after takeoff

and I realizing that I am now heading

into a life all on my own -

fully supplanted were the ties, the roots,

the friends, the familiarities,

gone at least for now that familiar

sight of pleasant landmarks on the way home

and what is home now

what is

what is home

when all I feel is rootlessness and the 

ruthlessness of a migrant's raw homesickness.

I will soon move on to the next chapter of my life,

and will have to bid farewell to all I have known.

how it hurts

I cannot have what I have always had, forever,

I can be where I have always been, forever

I cannot have those who were once my friends

always near me and always friends, forever,

aargh! this I know but how it hurts

how it hurts to let go

of that branch

I have always held, close to my heart,

how it hurts and blisters

my bleeding heart.

I am left alone with my thoughts,

or shall I call them emptiness,

and loneliness, and melancholic homesickness,

that homesickness of one 

who constantly longs for home

but belongs nowhere,

uprooted and rootless.

home is for me, it seems at times,

nowhere and never

and do not dismiss this quickly

as the inevitable ruminations

of a melancholic daydreamer

for this is the raw scream and cry 

of a human being who once lived upon this earth -

do not dismiss this my story,

nor dismiss any story of any human life

upon this earth,

for our songs and hymns are all different,

our journeys look alike but are magnificently different

when we rise to meet God

and journey with him. 

so,

Lord have mercy

    Christ have mercy

Lord have mercy

and I suddenly realise

I can find home

only in You,

God,

if only I would let myself in,

in into Your outstretched arms.

and this strengthens my heart,

and I am suddenly healed, uplifted

I miss my home, my family -

I miss you Appa, I miss you Amma,

I miss you brothers and sisters - 

I miss the friends that have moved on,

and the thought that everything I now know

will soon move on just as

everything I had previously known

has moved on,

intensifies my homesickness

nothing will always be the same,

nothing will always be constant and unchanging,

like the ideal home that I long for,

but You, O Christ Jesus,

You will always be there for me

with Your Love, with Your outstretched arms.

You, Jesus,

    are

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