All roads

All roads, by all means,
just to flee home,
to flee from this fear of war
my mother passed on to me
(long before she past away).

Now bombs are falling
too close to home for comfort,
it woke again, this deeply rooted fear

we would fall too.

But I know you cannot ride
this kelpie,
let it be by the river
(the ferryman is too wealthy, anyway).

Motionless I sit
and call the sun to me.

My mother survived that hell
in real life – no shelter to be found
and parts remained there
all those seventy years
that followed
(my father found shelter
half a minute before
the front door was blown past −
that too stuck in his silence,
yet the unspoken words
took root too in the boy I was).

Too young to live in that land
I fled my home ground
to believe myself safe,
but now it has found me
in my pain for all those that see
their lives broken
(for I am no longer that boy).

All I can do,
is take this fear up in my lap
and rock it, cradle it,
acknowledge its existence
(I am not alone, as I always believed)
and feel it settle into an uneasy calm −

in ways setting free my home ground
no more blame, they were
too young too and without help.
Lightness has no garden
in a dark heart,
but Sun will wriggle in
enough warmth
to make grass grow

and by those grassroots
I will find my way home

to light a candle
at their graves,
hoping to burn away
the misplaced blame

home is
where the heart is
and I miss them

I ache for all those
that know the fear only too well

home should be a sacred cradle

the fear sleeps again