The Midwest

Life in the Midwest reminds me of Johnny Cash and "Sunday Morning Coming Down"

I was born of the ceaseless plains

with the endless sky above

It was there I learned to wander

it was there I learned to love

 

Despite where life had taken me

from green grass to black sea foam

I’d cried to each wind filled valley

"will I ever find a home"

 

Days of life would pass on to years

distant plains rang out a plea

Over the rivers and valleys

where my home had drank of me

 

The Midwest had been calling me

as it echoed out in song

"I am the land of your fathers

and here is where you belong"

 

 

Author's Note

For many of the years of my life I wondered why I never felt at home when I traveled far and wide? Then as I aged it came to me. There is a reason birds fly back to where they were born and fish swim thousands of miles to spawn in the rivers they were born from. Who we are is as simple as where we came from. So I came home to start a family and pass that to my own children.

Reviews

[Leigh]

This is of epic proportions and really rolls out how you feel about a certain place and how you long to return there. There is a haunting feel as it intimates you being somehow controlled by an unknown calling, perhaps deep in your subconscious. Altogether very well written and presented as usual and I very much enjoyed the read. I can relate this to the pull of my home.

[Tate Morgan]

leigh we are all haunted by the ghosts of our ancestors. driven like the birds home to the hearth around which we told our tales thank you

[Brittany Zedalis]

╰☆╮This is really awesome. Made me kind of nostalgic for where I've grown up, even though it's not the Midwest. Wonderful work. (:╰☆╮

[Tate Morgan]

Thank you Brit It is a ray of light when you visit

[KWP]

I very much enjoy your words they seem so light and yet come packed with tightly fitted emotion right to the top...

Isn't it funny I view my time here merely as a gypsy, i am here a while on this earth to learn from any direction that I can, I have travelled across the globe and still I hear the call of the universe whispering softly in my ear 'continue on with the flow' ...

funnily enough I tell my husband ... ohh imagine when were are old, just the two of us traversing the globe, the boys will have to come visit 'as he rolls his eyes in exasperation' :D x x

[Tate Morgan]

HAHAH yeah i can see his eyes now thank you Oh we can no more escape who we are than we can take away the years.

[Lyn Anderson]

I had to listen to the whole song. It is soothing, and goes well with the poem, despite its melancholy subject, Johnny Cash kind of is that way. A wonderful picture you paint here of home and memory.

[Tate Morgan]

Thank you Kl He reminds me of myself I have a lot of his bad traits and a few good ones.

[Lyn Anderson]

Well, as long as it's mostly good on balance ...:)

[Tate Morgan]

Yeah and the older I get the more the good seems to overtake the bad If i live long enough I should be able to shake the tough ones

[wordman]

loved the write you can`t seem to get away from home and if you do you wander back
when you get older

[Tate Morgan]

You know I think about this time and again and cant help feeling the tug that is always pulling me back thank you

[wordman]

i have met johmmy cash a cpl times,he had a musuem in my neighborhood and a train with tires

[Tate Morgan]

I wish i had met him

[wordman]

had a hole in the seat of his pants,came out of a store buying cigarettes,wife across street at the musuem with a mink on and diamond rings on her finger driving a buick Rivera,his second lead guitar player lived there

[Tate Morgan]

that sounds like the man i imagined

[wordman]

would get high and drive that train on the road get tickets and put in jail,the sheriff of walker county was on this is your life with johnny cash

[Tate Morgan]

Johnny Cash had that one trait that I hate it myself but admire in others He was his own worst enemy

[wordman]

i think a lot of high profile people share the same faults

[Avinash]

Your heart always belongs to the place where you were born. All the mountains, rivers , winds, flowers shape you up and that becomes part of your soul.
Your words quite echo inside me as I am also living in a distant land from where I was born. I write may be because I want to reclaim those old time's feel and smell. Today when I think of all that It does not appear anything less than a fairy tale.

[Tate Morgan]

Avinash thank you I suppose we all know what it means to leave home thinking we can never return till weve made good. But home is where we are safe loved and ourselves.

[J. K. Beach]

Tate,

I can easily identify with this piece. I haven't wandered, maybe, as much as you, but my "Midwest" is the mountains of Western North Carolina. I only live about a hundred miles away, but sometimes that might as well be a thousand. I only get back to visit with my mother every 4-8 weeks--not nearly enough, and, while there are ways to keep in touch with family, the land, the mountains that I love might as well be as separate from me as the earth is from the moon. Thanks for sending this one to me. It is a reminder of what is important about the places we love, but it has made me a little sad... as some good poems must. Good work!

[Tate Morgan]

Thank you J.K. You are feeling the same thing we all do when the echos of our childhood call to us as men beckoning us home

[J. K. Beach]

Yes I am... by the way "Sunday Morning Coming Down" is one of my favorite Cash songs... you've good taste in music!

[Tate Morgan]

Thank you he tends to speak to me as well

[Baby Ricochet]

I'm from the rural south. I couldn't get out fast enough and I only go back for funerals. You're poem is good though. Maybe if I wasn't from such a crappy place I'd relate to it better.

[Tate Morgan]

lol mark you crack me up man Oh I guess you would like the midwest. thanks

[Frieda P]

Yep cowboy, this could definitely be a Johnny Cash song....melodic and tells a great story. So are you a bird or a fish? ;) It's so you Tate!!

Enjoyed muchly....it's down to earth and gritty, just as cowboy poetry should be.....

[Tate Morgan]

I am as common as any weed and probably more akin to the tough weeds than the beautiful flowers .Thanks hon

[Frieda P]

I know you're down to earth, but you kicked up a lot of dirt in yer hay day haha ;)

“Weeds are flowers too, once you get to know them.”
—A. A. Milne

[Tate Morgan]

oh I have stumbled home many times lol

[Frieda P]

...and probably left a lot of broken hearts in your wake :)

[Tate Morgan]

I suppose I there a few who missed me in the end