Where
Mar 7 2010


I’m not sure where I’m from.
A question frequently asked
in this land of immigrants
and travellers.

I was born in the far-off capital
in a spanking-new hospital
downtown;
3rd son,
not the hoped-for daughter.
But began life in a modest suburb,
much like all the others
in the post-war rush
of optimism.
That provincial city
is now a preening metropolis
I do not recognize,
and was hardly ever a part of, anyway.

Then college town.
Restless twenties
and counting.
The place I now call home.

I have lived half my life
away
from my place of birth;
but, like blood and belonging
find it hard to escape.
Despite the realization
you can be in more than one place
at a time.
And now that I’m free to proclaim
whatever allegiance I please
I feel as though I’m falling through the cracks,
belonging to neither.
As the future and the past
pull apart faster and faster,
the older I find myself.

You can get comfortable, after awhile,
setting down roots
like a house on its concrete foundation.
Or just feel settled,
a small wooden cottage
nestled into the land,
after its slanted floors and crooked walls
eventually stop moving
— off-kilter
but solid enough.
Yet you’re still an outsider,
the big-city boy
from the suburbs,
without the attachment of grandparents, cousins
uncles and aunts,
of families dividing
branch-by-branch.

Presuming, of course, that “where” is geographic
and not a state of mind.
A state of travelling
from here to there,
from young to old,
from boy to man.
A question strangers never ask;
and so much harder to answer.