Moving On

They said that you never go back
once you leave home.
I was sure I would
and I promised
my mother
as we packed the big black trunk.

I was homesick and in tears those
first few days in college.
‘Hay fever’, I said.
In September!
I promised
I’d come home at the weekend

And I did, I did as just I’d promised.
But I didn’t want to go.
Didn’t want to leave
all my new friends
and all the new
possibilities,
though it was nice to meet old ones again.

I had lots to tell them about my new home,
my new friends and my new place.
And about all the excitement.
I planned for old friends
to visit my new home
and they did
eventually.
And then the new went to visit the old.

But ‘they’ were right to say that
you never go back home
once you leave.
I never did.
Not really.
I never
went back
to stay.

First published in Silver Birch Press, September 2016

https://silverbirchpress.wordpress.com/2016/09/08/moving-on-poem-by-lynn-white-when-i-moved-poetry-and-prose-series/

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