A Place We Call Home

For a writing exercise, write a poem or a few paragraphs about the place you call home. Whether city or small town or rural, show us your memories. Do you still love it or are you glad you left and never want to return. It can work both ways, depending on what you see in your home place. It's possible that we see it differently when we look back many years later than we did when we grew up in what we possibly considered a 'boring' place. Show us the physical characteristics and the people. Show us what part of the place draws you back. 

As a good example and because it's St. Patrick's Day, I've featured a poem by Yeats, the Irish poet. It shows his love and yearning of a place of long ago.

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS



I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,

And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;

Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,

And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,

Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;

There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,

And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;

While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,

I hear it in the deep heart’s core.