Tuesday Poem: Belonging

Wellington harbour 2014

I am no more at home here
than the sea gull
visiting the old wharf outside the bar.
But the hills
around the bay lift my heart
and the dry
Marlborough wine tastes clean
on my tongue.

And I could sit forever here
watching the wind
capture the waves and toss
seabirds above
the tilting horizon.

Where is it?
This thing called home.  The destination port
we’re all aiming for.
Salmon scent the water that spawned them;
migrating birds
guided by a compass in the brain.

Not bound by instinct
we can choose where we perch
drawn to a wide sky
a certain line of hills, a street, a field
that has something of ourselves
we recognise, deep as an ocean trench
beyond memory

a homecoming.

© Kathleen Jones

This is still a notebook scribble on my journey through New Zealand.  Thinking a lot about travelling and belonging and where exactly 'home' is.  It's a bit like that thing called 'beauty' - you know it when you see it.  Wellington always feels like home to me.


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