Depayse

Dépaysé – situated in unfamiliar surroundings, being out of one's element: displaced, astray. In other words, it is a foreign word to describe feeling foreign.

My connection? I come from the nation with a loooong tradition of emigration. Over the centuries, lots of Poles didn't like what was happening at home (no need to bore you with many examples of history not being very kind to us) or thought that they might like other places better so they would just up and leave for pastures new. Some of them did rather well for themselves in their new countries. For example, Tadeusz Kościuszko couldn't find a job at home so left for America and became a general. Maria Skłodowska settled in France (and might be mightily pissed off today if she knew how many people know her as Marie Curie and consider her French), as did Fryderyk Chopin before her (well, he was half French but born and raised near Warsaw in a family who were rather big on the Polish language and traditions). Or how about Józef Konrad Korzeniowski who sailed to Britain and, probably to save poor Brits from the health hazard of excessive tongue-twisting, told them to call him Joseph Conrad.

Definitely not trying to compare myself to them... The common ground we have is that, at the ripe age of forty-something, I also decided to find out what it would be like to live in a different country. Some tell me that it was a bold move but, to be frank, I had no idea what I was signing myself up for. Yep, that's right. As far as I can remember, my boldest actions have always stemmed from me being completely clueless about what I was doing. Now that this fact is out in the open, let us not dwell on it but rather move on to the poem as quickly as possible:

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Fish out of water

a tree with no root to stand on

in a new soil

(is it soil or eggshells?)

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A fish out of water

is what my swelling body takes me for

although we left the ocean behind

eons ago

-

Familiar signposts gone

or shifted

to the wrong side of the road

(are they goalposts?)

-

If we were made of stone

we would stand immovable

rooted to the spot

but soft flesh craves the frisson

-

Like bold ancestors of mine

in search of new vistas

I crawl further and further

on my battered fins

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And here is the link to Penny's challenge: https://vocal.media/writers/part-d-the-a-z-of-unusual-words