The poem below was written in January 2009 at the age of 18. Or that’s the date I have on it, but I think I actually wrote the first draft a few months earlier in August of 2008. Recently, I opened up a copy of Echoes of Eternity, the first book of poems I published. I realized that few of my poems in that book had ever been published on my blog. Even though I feel like some of them fall below par (and I cringe when I see that), I also realize that there are some really good ones in the book. Also, there are a few that never really were good friends with me (for instance, they never seemed to quite say what I wanted them to say, or sound like I wanted them to sound) but when I returned to read them years later, I find that they are much better friends than I ever thought them to be. Below is one of those, called “Home,” mostly because ever since I left the village, homesickness has been harder.

Home

Someday I’ll travel all the world

And sail the oceans wide

I’ll climb the highest mount on earth

And row my boat against the tide

I’ll view the Alps of Switzerland

In their majesty unswayed–

Unless my little grain of faith

Reduce them trembling and afraid;

And yet I’ll still look back and see

That no matter where I go,

Near or far, wherever I roam

Across the broad world I know–

Still burn the lights of home.

I’d see them still, the lights of home,

Imprinted on my mind,

No matter how much Persian wealth

Or Yukon gold I’d find

They’d call me still and stay with me

Even as the Sphinx I’d view

I’d think of them as I’d kneel down

And wash my face in China’s dew.

If I could climb Mt. Everest,

Cling victorious to its peak-

Almost to touch the sky’s vast dome–

Still my eyes would ever seek

For the hearth fires of my home.

In Africa’s huts or Bedouin’s tents,

In the palaces of Spain,

In sunlight on the purple moor,

Or in the fog of London’s rain;

In the tropics of the south;

Or in the blinding Arctic snow,

My soul would always think of home

Beneath the elms and my heart would know

That whenever rejected by the world

Or saddened by its sin

Through the weeping rain, I’d gladly come

And always find rest within

The burning lights of home.

-January 10, 2009