My home does not come with a flag;
A maple leaf or Union Jack
Surrounded by a spattering
Of stars: the Southern Cross.

I have stopped associating home
With any one landscape
Of wheat fields like my grandmothers patchwork quilt,
Red earth desert, gum trees, or jellyfish beaches;
Of skies that span
From horizon                           to                                 horizon,
Or even spatterings of Great Lakes across rocky, tree-filled land.

I try not to call any one building home.
Not a blue and white Queenslander
with veranda and no-glass windows;
An ant filled banana tree,
Goannas lap up eggs like water.
Kites fly in the sky, as if on strings from children’s hands,
As if they don’t prey on the prey of wild-fires gone wild.
Time stands on the pools cool ledge;
Won’t dive to the deep end,
(Oh won’t you come and rescue me!)
Wild bush that will never be tamed.
It is tame now, I hear.

Not that stucco house that pointed to the sky,
Warning vicious winters; fishpond with spits of fire,
A sergeant bearing the weight of water on his lonely heart.
Spring breezes over hardwood floors and I lie in the sun
That shines from the sky and the sun that shines
On my mind from the pages of a novel.
The neighbour’s children ride by on tricycles
Not seen but I hear the gravel-crunch.
Weren’t they babies yesterday?
Wasn’t I? Life goes by
Too quickly.
Huddled against the cold, night sky
Above my head, puppy curled beneath my feet
And I fall asleep, exhausted from high altitudes and
Her quick, rhythmic breathing.
Memories of when Time died.
A name hidden in a closet corner.

Not even House and Hell, my heaven of spotlights
and horror-movie concrete walls,
Spattered with painted names, upon names, upon names that
Span into the past; all who found their home there.
The suffocating smell of hairspray in a basement;
Heavy curtains of black hide me like a cocoon,
And I spin and spin and spin
Until I disappear.
That place steals pieces of the soul;
You leave believing you are whole,
Despite tears shed on an old man’s shoulder.

No, my home lies within myself.
I carry it from continent to continent,
Landscape to landscape,
Horizon to horizon,
So when I leave everything behind,
As I so often do,
I am not homeless;
My home is in me.