Home Town

The town that I am proud to call my own Is not a lighted city with towers of stone, No seaport sensuous with the smell of ships. Yet when the day goes by and darkness slips Into the hedges and the orchards there, Of all the world I think my town most fair, With lamps like casual fireflies in the dark And lovely as the singing of a lark The children’s voices and the crickets’ choir Lifting toward heaven as the moon lifts higher. My town lies seldom on a map or chart Yet bright it twinkles in memory of the heart, And there I turn, a tired, forgotten man Deep in the city’s blinding, hurrying span, To claim my peace, my lost identity Where even the sunflowers’ eyes remember me.