Always Going Home

We leave home to return home.

      WE the Jews.

      WE the exiled.

Travel far to see the intricacy of history.

History of the world.

This is our history too.

      We always are waiting, wanting,

      -Return me home.

Travel to the corners of the map to find our history.

See in it the beauty.

See the strength of prayer, of price, of light, of time.

See it in the assimilation.

      WE are the same here, and different here,

      but we are all WE and that’s what makes us,

      definably us.

(being ¼^th WE is all you need to be, to be WE)

See the stars at night, and the stars on the ceiling.

Gold, Blue, Bright, Warm, Wonderful.

Welcome me from anywhere to anywhere  to find that WE are everywhere.

Where are we?

Why are we here and not home?

      Why are WE here and not home?

When it all seems too much we return.

Return home only to leave again.

Because to be far away from home,

Is how we learn to love home.

      WE learned this long ago.

Author's Note

This poem needs a lot of information to understand it I guess. I am currently on a gap year program in Israel called Kivunim. Yes I am Jewish, but the program isn't relgious. What we do is examine the Jewish identity all over the world. How do we do this? We travel. For a few weeks at a time we learn about the next Jewish culture, then we go and see it. We meet the people left in the communities. We see the structures that are left. We do the same thing for arab culture too, or at least we did while we were in Spain, Morocco, and Turkey. We are currently learning about central Europe, in three weeks we are going to Germany, Czech Republic, and a few other places. The lecture I was in while writing this was on Jewish Identity. A strong part of the Jewish identity, as it was presented, is in large part based on returning to Israel. In this poem I tried to compare my feelings at the end of our trips, the want to return "home", back to my bed, back to stability, and the feelings of the Jews all over the world while they were in exile. I am sure there are more errors in spelling and grammer in this then there are in the poem. But I hope this clarifies the poem. Please edit the shit out of it. Tell me if something, anything doesn't feel right.

Reviews

[Amy Vaughn]

Because to be far away from home,
Is how we learn to love home.
WE learned this long ago.'

That is my favorite part, and really hit home for me for some reason. I love this poem, like all of your others.

[Steve]

This is lovely...and powerful!