You Can'T Get Home From Here Poem by gershon hepner

YOU CAN'T GET HOME FROM HERE

You can't get home from here because
there is no going home once you
have left. What is can't be what was,
and what is old cannot be new.
Though you may try to go back where
you think you come from, it will never
be where you came from, since the air
in it has changed for you forever,
as you have changed forever, too,
not being who you were before
you strayed so far from home, and threw
away what you cannot restore.
Two things have changed, yourself and home,
and there is no chance to come back
to be a painless palindrome,
attempting vainly to backtrack.

Inspired by a poem by the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, Natasha Trethewey:
THEORIES OF TIME AND SPACE
You can get there from here, though
there's no going home.
Everywhere you go will be somewhere
you've never been. Try this:
head south on Mississippi 49, one-
by-one mile markers ticking off
another minute of your life. Follow this
to its natural conclusion - dead end
at the coast, the pier at Gulfport where
riggings of shrimp boats are loose stitches
in a sky threatening rain. Cross over
the man-made beach,26 miles of sand
dumped on a mangrove swamp - buried
terrain of the past. Bring only
what you must carry - tome of memory
its random blank pages. On the dock
where you board the boat for Ship Island,
someone will take your picture:
the photograph - who you were -
will be waiting when you return

6/7/12 #10438