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Eshowe, Eshowe:
we would chant your name on journeys home,
from the first time we spotted it on a signboard
till we rolled into town.

You made me:
a child of sugar cane and ocean air,
of winding hills and balmy breeze.
On days they burned the fields,
we called the soot “Eshowe snow”.

The Fort; the forest.
Two main roads and a mall
where you could “get it all”.
Book Club and Saturday Morning Market;
drama with Ida on Tuesdays and
piano lessons with Mrs White
on Wednesday afternoons.

Eshowe, Eshowe:
you are a place generous with life.
This is where I learned:
to walk and talk and dance and sing,
to read and count and drive and thrive.
Where I hurt and where I healed.

Eshowe, Eshowe:
you will always be
where I’ve come from
and where I’m coming from,
my place of origin and point of reference.
No matter where I find myself in this world,
your hills will call me home.
It aches – more than I can ever say – to let you go.
The mark you have made is everlasting.
Eshowe, Eshowe:
I am still chanting.
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Today for NaPoWriMo, the challenge was “to write a poem of origin. Where are you from? Not just geographically, but emotionally, physically, spiritually? Maybe you are from Vikings and the sea and diet coke and angry gulls in parking lots. Maybe you are from gentle hills and angry mothers and dust disappearing down an unpaved road. And having come from there, where are you now?” I wrote a poem for my hometown, based off of a few paragraphs I wrote at the end of last year when my parents moved towns. I didn’t really get into emotionally/physically/spiritually but I think it’s all sort-of in there anyway. I’m from a really special town ❤