Homesick by Barbara Eknoian

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Homesick
by
Barbara Eknoian

I cross the miles holding

on to memories:

my children’s first steps,

their first days at school,

romping in piles

of orange and gold leaves.

The neighborhood movie house,

where Rocky played

for six months.

It was something I could rely on

when I looked up at the marquee.

The drugstore where my kids

brought their piggy banks;

the clerk counting out

pennies to buy me perfume.

Chatting over the backyard fence,

as we hung clothes on our lines.

Margaret always washed

on Mondays, shopped on Thursdays;

Vivian walked to the market at noon.

I arrive in the new land

of smog-filled haze

and star-like cacti,

I am on another planet.

I long to see the familiar landscape

of windswept leaves

resting against

the sagging redwood fence.

Barbara Eknoian lives in La Mirada, California, with her extended family--where she says "there is always room in the inn." Originally from New Jersey, she was forever homesick until she joined Donna Hilbert’s poetry workshop in Long Beach. Barbara was the first recipient of the Jane Buel Bradley Chapbook Award for her collection, Jerkumstances (Pearl Editions).

Juanita:
Barbara: this is lovely. I have Ray sitting beside me and he is also homesick. Juanita
Posted 10/25/2012 05:03 PM

peninsulapoet:
No one conjures memories of home like Barbara.
Posted 10/18/2012 09:35 AM

erinsnana:
Loved this poem...which conojures my own memories of home.
Posted 10/18/2012 07:38 AM

phebe.davidson@gmail.com:
Glad to find another Jersey soul at work in poems. This is evocative, and takes me right back to that home state years ago.
Posted 10/18/2012 07:19 AM

Eiken:
Barbara, I really identified with this poem, I have lived abroad for years and I got home just a few years back, set up home in Ireland again and then my husband's work took us away to Europe all over again. I am holding on to the sagging fence here and hope we will retire here in the future. Maire in Ireland!!
Posted 10/18/2012 04:45 AM

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