The Mercy of Returning

What do we owe the place that gave us our first name,
and if we owe it something, how are we to know
what that something is when the years have carried us
so far from the beginning?

Is remembering enough, or must a person return
to the old home and stand where he once stood,
looking toward the hill he knew as a boy,
trying to understand why leaving
never seemed to be the same thing as being gone?

I have spent years learning that a place can remain
in you long after you have ceased to belong to it,
that the sound of a voice can bring back a whole life
before you have time to defend yourself against it.

What does home require of us, if anything?
Does it require our return, our loyalty,
our sorrow for what has changed?

I think of the people who lived there before me,
people who worked their days and went to their graves
believing the earth would continue after them.

They were right.

The house may fall.
The road may change.
The boy who left may become an old man.

Still, the holler stays where it was,
holding the morning above it,
asking nothing of the man who comes back
except that he remember he was once young,

and that somebody, somewhere,
loved him enough to let him go.