Homeward
At the new school we were taught
how to repair railway engines
at home.
Tomorrow, they said, we’ll do metaphor.
Then figures of speech,
lined up in a row
with the nine green bottles.
I kept my home in a jam jar,
emptied of kings and queens.
My mother was in there, stripping rosemary
into the boiled cabbage.
The chimney pot was cracked.
Someone had lost the key to the shed.
I was sent to pick runner beans
in a tourist Pullman that smelled of hay.
For three days and nights
the whole village ran beside us,
trying to bring the harvest home.
Then the fields gave out.
The conductor punched my ticket.
My postal code was not to be found.
Stateless, he wrote.
“Your mother has been telephoned for,”
he said. “At teatime she will meet you in 1945.”
In the dining car, Lady Straw
laid the seeds of rebellion
in the china egg cups.
They hatched before the soup arrived.
“How dreadful,” she said,
“to have mumps so far from home.”
I passed her the marmalade.
She spread it on a map of France.
At Chalk Farm I changed
for a battered London,
home to all and sundry.
Sundry was waiting on the platform
in a knitted bobble hat.
Everyone else had gone on ahead.
He helped me lift the jar
onto the luggage rack.
Inside, the water reached the upstairs windows.
My mother stood on a chair,
holding the potatoes above her head.
I took the jar and ran for the bus,
which came late, full of prisoners of war
building houses on concrete slabs
as we travelled.
They put up a prefab church
between the driver and the stairs.
None of them rang the bell.
At Chelsea the river rose.
We moved our feet onto the seats.
Lady Straw opened her umbrella.
The artist took the wheel,
his sleeve dripping paint on the gearstick.
He charged the water half fare.
“Single, or return?”
In the evening
through the steamy window I could see
the office manager arriving late,
taking off his head,
setting it down beside the papers.
My stop was on the other side
of the village, entirely hidden.
I knew it by the great Cedar of Lebanon
growing through the bus shelter
and the child’s tricycle
chained to a telegraph pole.
The house had been built in a day.
Its guarantee expired before the weekend.
They renamed the street,
the village gone from the map.
I set the jar upon the step
and watched the upstairs window
open in the water.
My mother shook the tablecloth.
Crumbs drifted past the clothesline.
Behind her, someone laid my place.
I unscrewed the lid.
The owls came out first,
then the smell of hay,
then letters addressed
to places that no longer existed.
The house unfolded round me.
My wet coat hung from a hook.
The Instructions from Kim-Whysall-Hammond
Write a poem about a specific person, real or imaginary, who has had to leave home.
Your poem could tell a fairy tale, offer a confession, or recount the experience of someone you know, admire, or have just met in passing. These stories can also be uplifting, joyful, or funny.
Focus on one person’s experience. Tell us why they left and what happened to them. Describe their journey, both physical and personal.
Include the word “home” in your poem. Name the poetic form.
Poetic form: surrealist narrative poem in free verse, developed through collage.
Featured image: Detail: Vilhelm Hammershøi: Landscape near Lyngby north of Copenhagen.