In Chicago, not at Home

There is no sense of home for me here

and I'm not even there anymore

except for now in my memory

as I wind through the streets

going from here to there

in the Green Mill

underground downtown

waiting for my love around the corner

The sense of home comes to each of us at birth

otherwise we are tumbling

through the waves of an electrified field

we are unfamiliar with

imprinted on us at the moment of conception

or perhaps the moment of our birth

or learning to sail through it as we grow

and from then on it is everything

This reminder came to me listening to Metheny

ask if I was going with him

and for that moment I was

standing on a train platform

heading for a studio downtown

to record a commercial for a furniture store

inconceivable to me now

that I would follow him into the city

But there is the power of music

the piper pulls you through another life

just listening to a melody or a beat

that passed through your world

a long time ago in another life

and suddenly you are transported

into the sights and feelings

the pain of not being at home where you are

But I can pull myself away now

and I'm back in the Black Hills

surrounded by my magnetic field

so comfortable and warm

and hearing another city move through my mind

I move back and forth

swaying between home and hurt

the pain of a city where love went away

Copyright (c) 2012 by Barry G. Wick