Home is Earth
home is earth; all of it,
none of it. at times i feel myself
separated from body
hovering
over my grandma’s slice of home
decades ago, in Flatbush, where she never let
the word no
determine her stature, where her elegant
veiny brown hands parted hair
for poised shoulders and
paid the way for the next succession
of elders, who would tell stories of her
white gloved lunches with other Caribbean
beauty queen homebodies, other pearl-stringed
business builders who fried plantain and raised communities
who crossed stolen oceans with sea shanties and tall tales to keep
the children home, away from pavement and every sad rule cracked into it
home is earth; all of it
every song my grandfather ever puffed up and
floated out of his horn, every hall that echoed them
which he entered from the back
every place he’d plant a bible quote
deep as the dimples of his grandchildren
every tour bus and every mile covered
and all the bloody soil, the acres of sweat in the air
that carry screams and whistles and drums and belt
and laughter, everywhere laughter touches becoming home widening up to fit us, loosening comfortably around us
and my bedroom in Brooklyn a charging station
for my weary soul, always a stranger in my own home in South Carolina where little aunt rosa cocked her gun at the sheriff.
yes, home is earth, all of it
the spot in Vietnam where my uncle died
before I existed. the bushy Jamaican roads where
my mother played in the summer rain in her youth
which mimic the winding red dust routes of Tanzania the midwestern football fields my father defeated in college, the globe, the garden of Eden, the Amalfi coast
the path to class through Regents Park
every tour route, every flight pattern, every place a song that has ever burst a heart into joyful tears, or moved a spirit to unearth its sorrow. everywhere the light touches, everywhere waterfalls, everywhere earth
breathes and waits and hopes for relief, for nurturing for a return to love, everywhere, all of it
and none of it
is home